NEW BOSTON, Texas -- Jurors heard opening statements Monday in the murder-for-hire trial of an alleged Loyalty Cash Business gang member.
Cedric Deshun Alexander, 31, of Wall, Mississippi, is on trial in Bowie County's 5th District Court with Judge Bill Miller presiding. Alexander is charged with engaging in organized activity-capital murder in the death of Jermaine Aldridge on Dec. 30, 2020, at Chili's restaurant in Texarkana Texas. He is also charged with engaging in organized criminal activity-aggravated robbery.
"Murder for hire. That's what this is about. Murder for hire in Bowie County," Assistant District Attorney Katie Carter told the jury during opening statements.
Carter and First Assistant District Attorney Kelley Crisp are prosecuting the case for the state. Alexander is represented by attorneys Tabitha Branch and Jeff Harrelson.
Branch urged jurors during her opening statements "to hold the state to their burden of beyond reasonable doubt".
"The only thing you will conclude at the end of evidence is Cedric was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Branch said.
Police officers found Aldridge lying between two cars in the Chili's parking lot on the afternoon he was shot. He had been shot once in the back and died at the scene.
An 18-month police investigation into alleged violent criminal activity by the LCB/I-30 Cartel in the Texarkana area resulted in a number of arrests in June 2022, including Alexander's. The extensive investigation involved the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As Texarkana Texas Police Department detectives investigated, they reportedly discovered Aldridge's killing was a murder-for-hire plot involving the gang. Detectives also determined that the murder was actually part of a much larger series of criminal acts by LCB/I-30 Cartel members.
Investigators believe the LCB/I-30 Cartel comprises members of local gangs working together to further their drug business interests. The gang formed businesses including I-30 Cartel entertainment and trucking companies to make it appear the money made from selling drugs came from legitimate means, according to court records.
Carter told the jury about the "bookends" of crimes that Alexander and other LCB members are charged with. The crimes occurred between December of 2020 and September 2021. Three crimes connected to LCB members occurred on July 15, 2021. Detectives think the group was involved in the shooting of Joseph Hawkins as he sat in a vehicle outside a business in the 1700 block of West Third Street that day. This happened only minutes after another man was tied up inside his West 16th Street home and robbed at gunpoint by several men.
"This investigation kept getting bigger and bigger," Carter said.
Alexander and alleged LCB member Derial Greenwood were stopped by police on July 15, 2021 in Nash, Texas. The two men in the vehicle matched the description of men seen leaving a house on Cantrell Street in Nash that had been broken into earlier that day.
Testimony is expected to continue today at Bowie County Courthouse.