A Haughton man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the June 2024 shooting death of a Shreveport man at a Hollywood Avenue gas station. Ledonald Tyeska Sanders, 42, entered the plea last month, and Caddo District Judge John Mosley Jr. handed down the sentence in a case that began with a SWAT raid and the seizure of 26 firearms.
Sanders was accused of causing the death of 37-year-old Breyone Grimes, a Shreveport resident who was shot and killed in a gas station parking lot on Hollywood Avenue just after 8 p.m. on June 10, 2024, according to The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate. Police at the time said Grimes was shot while sitting in his car at a gas station at Hollywood and Jewella avenues, as KTAL reported. Per a police report, surveillance video allegedly showed Grimes and Sanders in parallel vehicles in the parking lot when gunfire erupted, with the shots believed to have come from a vehicle Sanders was driving.
From Arrest to Indictment
Investigators quickly identified Sanders, then reported as 40 years old, as the suspect and tracked him to an address in Haughton, according to the same KTAL report. An arrest warrant was issued, and the Bossier Parish Sheriff's Office SWAT team executed it, searching Sanders's home on Firwood Road. During that search, the Bossier Sheriff's Office seized 26 firearms among other items, a haul that Shreveport Police Chief Wayne Smith confirmed at the time, per the station's report.
Months later, a Caddo Parish grand jury indicted Sanders on a charge of second-degree murder in connection with Grimes's death, the same account notes. The case against him would ultimately be resolved not at trial but through a guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter, which Louisiana law defines as punishable by up to 40 years at hard labor, according to the Louisiana State Legislature.
A Complicated Relationship Between the Two Men
Court documents in the case alleged that Sanders and Grimes had been friends, according to The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate. Those same documents alleged that Sanders had recently felt hunted by Grimes, and one witness said Grimes had “held a gun to (Sanders') head.”
A clinical evaluation conducted as part of the case stated that Sanders was at moderate to severe risk for clinical depression, attributing that risk partly to significant health issues. A doctor nonetheless declared Sanders competent to understand the charges against him and to participate in his own defense, clearing the way for the case to proceed to its resolution before Judge Mosley.
