After guilty verdict, a plea
Accomplice accepts manslaughter count Tuesday, August 12, 2008By Benjamin Alexander-Bloch
Two days after his former Slidell High School classmate and accomplice was convicted of the murder, Edric Cooper, 20, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Monday in the shooting death of illegal immigrant Jose Luis Martinez-Carpio.

While it was Cooper who planned the robbery of Martinez-Carpio and six other illegal immigrants on April 29, 2007, Glenn Carter, of New Orleans, entered the Slidell-area travel trailer first and fired the fatal shots, according to testimony from Carter's trial.

On Saturday about 2 a.m., a St. Tammany Parish jury found Carter, 18, guilty of second-degree murder. That charge carries a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole, probation or suspension of sentence.


Cooper, of Slidell, had been charged with second-degree murder. Manslaughter carries no minimum sentence and a 40-year maximum.

If Cooper receives the maximum sentence, with good behavior he likely would serve 34 years. State Judge William Burris has not yet set a sentencing date.

Gerald Alonzo, a retired St. Tammany assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case against Carter and handled Cooper's plea agreement, said the charge against Cooper was reduced because he was only an accomplice to the crime.

"I am satisfied that we got the shooter in Carter," Alonzo said.

Jace Washington, 20, of Slidell, and Grant Gethers, 19, of New Orleans still face second-degree murder charges in 36-year-old Martinez-Carpio's death.

One definition of second-degree murder includes the killing of someone "when the offender is engaged in the perpetration" of a robbery, which legally applies to all accomplices in the act, not only the triggerman, according to state statutes.

After Carter entered the trailer's living room, Cooper and Washington walked into an adjacent bedroom and held up two other immigrants, Jose Roberto Romero-Echegoyen and Luis Fernando Martinez-Avila.

Washington ran out of the trailer after hearing Carter's three shots ring out from the next room, authorities said.

But Cooper allegedly got scared and fired a shot from his .38-caliber pistol at Martinez-Avila, of Honduras, according to the immigrants' testimony and forensic evidence from the scene.

The shot missed. Cooper then attempted to fire another shot at Martinez-Avila, but his gun jammed. He then fled.


Authorities have not disclosed details of Gethers' involvement except to say he also was an accomplice.

The morning after Martinez-Carpio's murder, on April 30, 2007, Carter met up with Cooper again near Slidell, according to a confession Carter later gave authorities.

He said Cooper was sitting on a stoop in the Huntwyck subdivision smoking "a blunt," a hollowed cigar filled with marijuana.

Carter agreed to be Cooper's lookout for an April 30 robbery, but during the attempt the two men heard someone yelling and aborted the crime.

After seeing a police officer in the neighborhood, Carter said he asked Cooper, "You got that gun on you?" and that Cooper had replied, "Yeah, I got it on me."

"Well throw it out!"

The gun, which a resident saw them hiding in some bushes, was the .38-caliber handgun that Cooper had used in the immigrants' travel trailer.

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Benjamin Alexander-Bloch can be reached at bbloch@timespicayune.com or 985.898.4827.


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