Police probe EBR slayings

• By JARED JANES
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Mar 17, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Authorities are looking for two killers and have a suspect in three unrelated attacks late Saturday.

Two men, Brent Cole and Barry Heard, were shot to death and a 51-year-old man accused of stabbing his neighbor in the head was arrested shortly after the incident, Baton Rouge police said Sunday.

Heard, 19, of 724 Marcellious Lane, was found lying in the street in the 1200 block of South 15th Street about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, police Capt. Jeff Smith said in a news release.

Heard was shot hours after standing in as the best man in his father’s wedding, his father, Barry Givins said Sunday at the family’s home.

Heard, whom his father described as a “good kid” who was “running around with the wrong crowd,” was shot near a business he often hung out at a few blocks away, Givins said.

Heard’s grandmother, Priscilla Givins, said she was told a car pulled up to where Heard was, someone inside called Heard over and he was shot before the car sped away.

Heard was left lying in the street until police and Emergency Medical Services arrived, when he was taken to Baton Rouge General Medical Center-Mid City, police said. He died a short time later.

Priscilla Givins helped raise her only grandson, whom she affectionately nicknamed “B.B.” after blues artist B.B. King, she said. Like his father, she said Heard got caught up in the street life.

“I really tried to steer him the right way,” Priscilla Givins said. “There’s so much devil out here.”

About four hours before Heard’s slaying, police were investigating the two other incidents simultaneously.

About 9 p.m., police responded to a stabbing at an apartment complex at 4546 North St. where they found a man bleeding from a wound on the left side of his head, police Capt. Lazarus Turner said in a news release.

The victim, who lives at the complex, told officers he was on the second floor of the complex when a man he did not know yelled, “I’m going to kill you!” at the victim, police said.

The suspect, later identified by police as Charles Williams Jr., allegedly charged at the victim while holding a large knife and then stabbed him, Turner said.