Man who killed 6-year-old in freeway shooting gets 40 years to life
Marcus Eriz, the Costa Mesa man who claimed not to understand why he fired the bullet from his car that killed a 6-year-old boy in 2021, received a sentence of 40 years to life in prison on Friday.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard King rejected a defense attorney’s plea for leniency on the basis of Eriz’s age — he was 24 at the time of the shooting — as well as the argument that Eriz had suffered childhood trauma.
King said he could find no connection between the defendant’s alleged trauma — left unspecified in courtroom arguments — and his decision to fire his Glock 17 on the freeway into the car the boy was riding in.
“The defendant didn’t commit any crimes until this particular day,” King said. “There was no impulse until this particular day.”
Eriz was in the passenger seat of a Volkswagen on May 21, 2021, with his girlfriend Wynne Lee at the wheel and his loaded, customized gun within easy reach. He claimed he kept it with him because people had been “acting crazy” on the freeways. They were heading north on the 55 Freeway near Chapman Avenue in Orange during the morning rush hour.
Joanna Cloonan was in her Chevrolet driving her son Aiden Leos to kindergarten, with the boy strapped into a booster seat behind her. By her account, the Volkswagen cut her off and its driver flashed her a sarcastic peace sign. Cloonan responded by flashing her middle finger.
At Eriz’s trial in January, there was no dispute that Eriz then grabbed his gun and fired at Cloonan’s car as she drove off, the bullet passing through the trunk and then the boy’s body. Jurors, who heard a 911 call of Cloonan begging for help with her son dying in her arms, convicted Eriz of second-degree murder, with an enhancement for the use of a firearm.
“I have no answer why,” Eriz told police when asked him why he had done it.
Nor were there answers at Friday’s sentencing hearing.
“Whether it was to impress your girlfriend [or] to release your anger, you fired, and that little boy died,” King said. He described Aiden as “the most vulnerable victim you can even imagine” and said the English language was inadequate to capture his mother’s torment.
In a statement he read to the court, Eriz, now 27, apologized to the victim’s family, asked for God’s forgiveness and said, “I am responsible for everyone’s trauma.”
As a young man, he said, he had lacked discipline and befriended “people with character flaws like mine.”
“I felt drawn to a fast lifestyle,” he said. “Like the friends I chose, I lived for the moment.”
During the 1,042 days he has spent in lockup, Eriz said, he has been reading avidly, including a biography of Socrates, which taught him “the importance of introspecting as that first step toward change.”
Eriz’s defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender Randall Bethune, asked King to strike the firearms enhancement and give Eriz probation, saying the killing was “a horrible, horrible mistake” and “absolutely an anomaly as to who Mr. Eriz really is.”
He said Eriz’s years in jail had so far not left him institutionally hardened. “He’s still as nice of a guy as when I first met him,” Bethune said. “His goodness is infectious.”
Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Feldman, asking for the maximum sentence of 40 years to life, said that to listen to the 911 tape was to hear “a depth of pain I have never heard before.”
Feldman said the defendant’s apology sounded sincere, but he had chosen to pull the trigger while never being in danger from the other car.
“He wanted the world to know what he was capable of,” Feldman said. “What he instilled in our community was fear.”
Aiden’s mother chose not to appear in court for the sentencing, and at a news conference afterward, Feldman said, “We were very grateful that we could stand for her.”
Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer applauded King for refusing to strike the firearms enhancement on the basis of Eriz’s age, but blasted the state Legislature for allowing judges that level of discretion.
“That’s what we are living with in California today,” Spitzer said, denouncing laws enacted in recent years that permit leniency for defendants 25 and under, which he said originated with “college professors in their ivory towers who study brain development.”
Eriz’s co-defendent, Lee, of Costa Mesa, is charged with being an accessory after the fact and having a concealed firearm in a car. She is out on bail awaiting trial.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
