In the midst of a two-week manhunt following the freeway shooting death of a 6-year-old boy, the question gripped Orange County commuters: “Who Shot Aiden?”
Law enforcement officers scoured business after business for surveillance footage, and asked the public for help — and for the perpetrators to turn themselves in.
Testimony in the ongoing Orange County Superior Court trial of the admitted gunman — Marcus Anthony Eriz — has laid out for the first time in detail how in 2021 investigators, initially left with little but vague descriptions of a male shooter and a female driver, a road-rage confrontation and a fatally injured young child, brought an end to the closely watched dragnet.
Joanna Cloonan had been driving her son, Aiden Leos, to kindergarten in the carpool lane of the northbound 55 Freeway during that May 21 morning’s rush hour, when the driver of a Volkswagen Golf Sportwagen sped up behind and then around her, cut off Cloonan’s Chevrolet Sonic, and flashed a peace sign.
Initially scared and then angered, Cloonan gave the other driver the middle finger as she merged into other lanes, she later told police. The mother would testified to briefly making eye contact with the male passenger in the Volkswagen, then hearing a loud noise and a cry of pain from her son. The single gunshot went through the trunk and struck the boy, in a booster seat in the rear. He died within the hour.
Quickly, CHP Officer Kevin Futrell, who handled felony investigations at the CHP’s Santa Ana field office, got the case. Having served in the U.S. Marine Corps, he testified in court in a dark suit with a long and well-kept beard and his hair in a ponytail.
Within 20 minutes, he was out on the freeway near the Walnut Avenue overpass in Orange.
Investigators requested to supervisors and Caltrans to shut down the northbound 55.
They walked the empty lanes, methodically searching for bullet casings or other evidence. Nothing was found.
A construction worker who was driving from his Santa Ana home to an Anaheim Hills worksite gave investigators their first major lead: Avila Raul, in testimony, described seeing the encounter between the two vehicles, which were ahead of him, followed by a man pulling out a gun and firing.
“I felt that was not OK and took a picture of the car to report it,” Raul testified through a Spanish-language interpreter.
Raul didn’t initially believe anyone had been struck. But a coworker who had also driven to work on the 55 Freeway and saw Cloonan carrying Aiden on the side of the roadway urged him to call 911. Investigators immediately drove out to his worksite to interview Raul.
The picture Raul took provided a general image of the suspect vehicle but was too far away and blurry to read the license plate.
Although 285 cameras dot the county’s freeways and tollways, so Caltrans and the CHP can get live feeds and respond to collisions and other events, they do not record. So officers from multiple agencies began the time-consuming task of going to businesses near the 55 looking for surveillance footage.
“We were knocking on every door along the freeway,” Futrell said. “If they had a camera visible from the street, we were talking to the manager or whoever had access to it.”
Better-quality photos of the suspect vehicle culled from that extensive search began to be released to the public.
Meanwhile, more than two dozen banners — “Who shot Aiden?” — were created by supporters from the public and draped over overpasses in Orange County and in the Inland Empire. A reward, at least part of it to be paid after a conviction, snowballed. Civic leaders and businesses pledged funds, and it grew to $500,000.
Various law enforcement agencies helped chase down leads that were starting to come in from around the country. Pressure on investigators continued to intensify as the manhunt stretched on. Six days after the shooting, District Attorney Todd Spitzer announced that Aiden’s killer, as well as the driver, had “about 24 hours to turn yourselves in.” An Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigator helped create a sketch of the male gunman and the female driver.
The improved surveillance-footage images helped investigators narrow down the year and the make of the vehicle based on the trim and the tires — it was not a common model.
A week and a half after the shooting, investigators had winnowed down possibilities to several dozen specific cars, presumably with help from the Department of Motor Vehicles database.
Meanwhile, an unidentified tipster told authorities that Eriz and girlfriend Wynne Lee had a car matching the description of the one they were searching for, according to previous court testimony. That tipster also mentioned that the couple had started coming to their workplace at a car shop in Highland in a different vehicle, Eriz’s red pickup truck.
It turned out that Lee’s parents had purchased a car investigators became interested in.
On June 6, 2021, a team of law enforcement officers were waiting for Eriz and Lee when his pickup truck pulled into a parking space at their Costa Mesa apartment. The couple was arrested without incident.
A key fob for a 2018 Volkswagen Sportwagen was found at their apartment.
After leaving Eriz in a patrol car at the Costa Mesa Police Department for more than an hour as they interviewed Lee, Officer Futrell and another investigator brought him into a small interrogation room. Footage from the interrogation has been shown during the trial.
After a brief chat about Eriz’s background growing up in Northern California, the investigators got to the point.
“You know exactly what this is about,” one said.
Eriz quickly admitted to firing the gunshot.
“I don’t know why, I have no answer why, but I pulled out my Glock and pulled the trigger and it was gone,” he said. “I’ll tell you anything.”
“I think we got through the hardest part right now,” Officer Futrell responded. “The cat’s out of the bag.”
Eriz has since contended that he didn’t know Aiden had died or that a manhunt was underway until a week after the shooting, when a coworker told him Lee’s vehicle matched the one police were searching for. He has said he decided not to turn himself in because he was worried Lee would get in trouble. She faces lesser charges, including being an accessory after the fact, in a later trial.
Jurors will likely be asked to focus on Eriz’s state of mind. The prosecution has argued that he acted with a “callous and total disregard for human life,” while the defense has countered that it was “a mistake, a rash decision by a young man.”
The trial’s closing arguments are expected on Wednesday, Jan. 24, followed by jury deliberations.
Source: Orange County Register
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