Murder suspect denies role in shooting in 2013 interview

Jurors heard Justin Edward Patterson in his own words, from 3 1/2 years ago, say he was at home the night of May 20, 2013, when Mikki Jay Dauntain was shot and killed in Morgan City.

Patterson is being tried for the second-degree murder of Dauntain for a shooting that occurred around 11 p.m. that day in the area of Federal Avenue and Garber Street. He’s also on trial for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

The trial began Tuesday and continued Thursday at the St. Mary Parish Courthouse.

If convicted of second-degree murder, he would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.

Patterson is alleged by the prosecution to have mistaken Dauntain for Brandon Scott, who Patterson allegedly thought had robbed him and his girlfriend several weeks earlier on Wise Street in Patterson. Dauntain was in a car with his girlfriend, Natasha Garner, and Scott right before the shooting.

Garner identified Patterson as the shooter to police right after the shooting.

During an interview conducted about eight hours after shooting, Patterson said he didn't know anything about the shooting, and said someone called him asking if he shot Dauntain that night. Everybody seemed to think Patterson did it, Patterson stated.

Patterson was trying to figure what happened himself because he was at his house in bed at the corner of Front and Franklin streets when the shooting occurred.

Morgan City Police Detective Travis Trigg helped conduct the interview of Patterson and took the witness stand for the prosecution. Trigg also investigated the shooting.

The interview started just before 7 a.m. May 21, 2013, roughly eight hours after police had first responded to the shooting.

Prosecutor Anthony Saleme played about an hour and 15 minutes of the roughly six-hour interview police conducted with Patterson. The video of the interview excluded only the parts where Patterson was alone in the interview room and not speaking. Patterson’s attorney, Suzanne deMahy, agreed to allow the jury to see the redacted version of the video interview.

In the video, investigators asked Patterson what caused his busted lip, and he said his girlfriend, Ashley Rudolph, threw a Coke can at him the night before because she thought he was trying to cheat on him. They'd gotten into a fight around 10:30 p.m. the night of the shooting over him messaging a woman on Facebook, he said.

Rudolph testified Wednesday that she had made up the story about throwing a Coke can at him to explain his busted lip and protect him. She said she actually thought he fell and busted his lip.

Patterson said in the interview that Rudolph had gone to her father's home on Mount Street after the fight and didn't come back until about midnight.

In the interview, Patterson asked Trigg what area of the city the shooting occurred, and Trigg said it was on the "north side of town."

During the interview, Patterson consented to a DNA saliva sample and a gunshot residue test on his hands.

Patterson stated that he came to the police department to tell investigators he wasn't involved in the shooting because he got phone calls about him being involved.

People probably thought he was in the area of the shooting because Dauntain's girlfriend, Natasha Garner, had allegedly stolen his phone in 2011, Patterson said.

Patterson wasn't happy about the cell phone theft, but eventually said Garner could just keep the phone.

Also, Garner and others were saying Patterson was at the scene of the shooting because they didn’t like a picture they thought he posted online, Patterson said.

Patterson had only been living on Front Street about three weeks when the shooting happened. He said he moved from Wise Street in Patterson because home had been broken into, and he was robbed.

He knew that Wanya Francis, Troy Richardson, Randolph Joseph and Austin Ray had been arrested in the alleged robbery. But Patterson didn't have a problem with anyone, he said.

Rudolph said in her testimony Wednesday that she and Patterson believed Scott was involved in the robbery, though he wasn’t arrested. She said that Patterson told her he inadvertently shot Dauntain on May 20, 2013, and meant to shoot Scott, who was with Dauntain and Garner when the shooting happened.

The day of the shooting, Patterson said he left work early about 3 p.m. to meet a Direct TV technician at his home. At 6 p.m., Patterson’s “homeboy,” Colby DiNicola, picked him up to go record music at DiNicola's home in Bayou Vista, he said.

Patterson and DiNicola started “messing with the music” when they got to DiNicola’s home on Field Road. Both of them “agreed to shut it down” about 10:30 p.m., Patterson said in the interview.

DiNicola dropped Patterson off around 10:45 p.m. at Patterson’s home in Morgan City.

Patterson then took a shower and went straight to bed, he said. He was lying in bed at 11 p.m. but still awake. A short time later, after he’d fallen asleep, Patterson said a phone call woke him sometime between 11 p.m. and 11:15 p.m.

When he went outside to smoke a cigarette right after the call, he heard sirens, and people were saying Dauntain was dead.

He said he didn’t remember who called him first. By midnight, Patterson was again asleep, he said.

Patterson said he stayed asleep from midnight to about 6 a.m., but earlier in the interview said he only got to two or three hours of sleep that night.

Saleme asked Trigg about a comment Trigg made in the interview telling Patterson that everyone put at the scene of the shooting. Trigg said that wasn’t entirely true, but was a police tactic to try to get a confession. However, police had developed two witnesses, at the time, who said he was at the shooting, Trigg said.

Trigg said to Patterson, during the interview, his sister, Jessicah Johnson, had a lot to do with the shooting, too, because she busted a window out in the car Dauntain had been in just prior to the shooting.

Johnson was indicted on a second-degree murder charge in the shooting but has yet to go to trial.

Police did gunshot residue tests on Patterson, Brandon Scott and Dauntain. All three the tests came back indeterminate as to whether they were in close proximity to or actually discharged a firearm, Trigg said.

Patterson’s DNA sample came back with no specific matches to DNA on the red car that Dauntain had been in just before the shooting. Police also took DNA found on Patterson’s shoes but couldn’t determine whose DNA it was, Trigg said.

And blood found on Scott at the scene of the shooting was determined to be his own blood, Trigg said.

Trigg also collected Patterson’s cell phone as evidence and asked his service provider, AT&T, for the phone records for a time range around the time of the shooting.

From about 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. May 20, 2013, the records showed back and forth calls and texts between a phone number registered to Patterson and a number labeled as “Jess’s” phone number in Patterson’s phone, Trigg said.

There were also texts and calls from Patterson’s number to a phone registered to Rudolph’s father, Patrick Madise.

Rudolph had testified that Patterson and she shared a phone, but Patterson had their phone that night. And she had borrowed her father’s phone to call Patterson.

Judge Lewis Pitman recessed the trial Thursday afternoon until 9 a.m. Friday after having earlier granted Saleme's motion to do so in order allow for the testimony of an alleged eyewitness to the shooting who’s living out of state.

Saleme had issued a subpoena for witness Alani Clark, who gave a statement to police saying she witnessed the entire shooting. Authorities had difficulty locating her, though, he said.

However, on Thursday morning, Saleme said Clark had finally been found in South Carolina, and Morgan City police were in South Carolina and supposed to arrive with her in Louisiana on a flight Thursday evening.

DeMahy objected to the motion calling the recess "excessive" and saying that the prosecution didn't do its "due diligence" to locate Clark the past three months leading up to the trial. The recess was just a way to delay the trial because the trial was going poorly for the prosecution, deMahy said.

Pitman said he anticipated that the jury would go into deliberation sometime Friday.