Raheem Willis
COVINGTON—Raheem Willis, 22, of Slidell, pled guilty Tuesday (July 14) to attempted second degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault with a firearm for his role in an August 2013 incident that led to the shooting death of a 28-year-old man.
Judge Peter J. Garcia sentenced Willis to 12 years in prison on the attempted second degree murder charge. Willis also received a five-year suspended prison sentence and five years of probation on the aggravated assault charges to be served after his release. Assistant District Attorney Louis Butler handled the case. The Slidell Police Department investigated it.
The plea agreement centered on the death of Clarence Adams, who was shot just before 3 a.m. on Aug. 18, 2013, after a dispute in a neighborhood bar in Slidell spilled into the streets. The incident started at about 2 a.m. that morning, when Willis drove past the bar and pointed a gun at two women who had been in a dispute with his girlfriend. The girlfriend later got into a fight in the same bar. Fearing retaliation from the bar fight, Willis asked a teenager, Eduardo Morales, then 15, to get a rifle for him.
On the streets outside the bar, Willis confronted Adams about derogatory remarks Adams had been accused of making about Willis’s girlfriend. To scare Adams, Willis fired a gun in Adams’ direction but then put the weapon down to engage in a fistfight. Morales picked up the rifle and fired it, striking Adams four times—once in his left arm, two in his left abdomen, and once in the head.
Morales was charged as an adult and pled guilty on May 6 to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison. A third man, Daquan Ratliff, 20, also pled guilty in May to accessory after the fact for fleeing the scene with the weapon and was sentenced to a five-year suspended sentence with five years of probation.