In the 2021 Orange County, California, road rage incident that killed 6-year-old Aiden Leos, a 26-year-old man named Marcus Eriz was found guilty of second-degree murder. He was also found guilty of two felonies related to the use of a handgun that caused severe harm or death. On April 12, Eriz will get a sentence that may land him anywhere from 40 to life in jail.
While his mother, Joanna Cloonan, was transporting Leos to Yorba Linda kindergarten on May 21, 2021, he was fatally shot. According to Cloonan’s testimony, she and her son traveled north on the 55 highway when a white Volkswagen SportWagen suddenly passed her in the carpool lane. Someone in the Volkswagen pulled up behind Cloonan’s vehicle and started shooting, hitting Aiden while in the backseat.
On June 6, 2021, Eriz and Wynne Lee were apprehended in their Costa Mesa, California residence. On the fateful day, Eriz opened fire on Cloonan’s vehicle, and investigators eventually found out that Lee was behind the wheel. Lee faced charges of having a hidden weapon in a car and being an accessory after the fact. She is now free on $100,000 bail and will be subject to GPS monitoring until her pretrial hearing on February 9.
In her testimony, Cloonan described Leos’s last minutes following the shooting of their automobile, and she did so through tears.
This whole thing started as a case of road rage, according to Eriz’s lawyer, and he had no idea he had killed someone until a coworker made the statement that Lee’s car matched the description of the one the police were looking for a few days later.
Separate from the main trial is the one for Lee, who has pleaded not guilty to the accessory after the fact charge. On Thursday, the jury revealed that they had reached a judgment after beginning deliberations late on Wednesday.
For some reason, he rushed into the backseat of his vehicle, retrieved his rifle, and fired shots into Cloonen’s automobile when she raised her middle finger at him and Lee.
