LAFAYETTE, La. — 2020 has turned into a deadlier than 2019 in Lafayette. Already, 15 homicides have occurred inside Lafayette, 11 happening in the second half of this year.
In 2019, 14 homicides were reported in Lafayette.
Two juveniles were arrested Wednesday, Dec. 2, for first-degree murder in the deaths of two Lafayette 18-year-old’s.
Curley Domingue and Diontrell Castille were identified as victims. The murder suspects identities are not being released because they are minors.
The mother of Curley Domingue said unreleased surveillance shows her son’s best friend being shot multiple times and her son being hit by a ricochet bullet. Still, she has room to forgive the people responsible.
“His friend Trell, Curley looked up to him as a brother. He loved his brother, and he said if something’s going to happen to him, it’s going to happen to me too,” Richard said of the boys killed.
The two recent Lafayette High graduates lost their lives on Voohries Street on November 13. It was only a couple blocks from where Marie Domingue Richard, the mother of one of the victims, lives.
Her son had told her he was hanging out with friends, and she believes the company he kept led to his death. She said, “Curley knew because he told me, ‘Momma, all my friends are getting killed.”
She says Curley wasn’t a perfect angel, hanging with the wrong crowd. Even if he didn’t do everything those around him did, she thinks a gambling habit with dice she discovered could have motivated first-degree murder, and she wishes she would have done more to prevent the lifestyle when Curley was younger.
“Moms, you make your kids listen, and if they don’t want to listen, y’all get help. Get help now. Don’t let them control y’all. Y’all control them,” Richard urged.
She hopes more outreach programs can help get the attention of kids and pleads Curley’s friends not to let what happened to him, happen to them too.
“Y’all say y’all love Curley. Curley’s y’all’s brother. Make him proud. Rise above yourself,” Richard said. “Stop showing off and hiding behind guns. Guns don’t protect you. In the long run, all that anger it’s going to hurt y’all.”
Richard says she has closure because she knows where her son is, but she feels for the parents of the murder suspects because they will have to worry about their children for decades to come.
“They are going to have with this growing up in their own world of hell being locked up amongst all kinds of crazy people,” Richard lamented. “Who’s to say they may lose their life trying to fight for their lives in the facility that they go in? I don’t wish that on nobody.”
Curley Domingue was an organ donor who will is already helping over 100 lives. He could not donate his eyes because of the damage caused when he was shot in the head.
