Man charged with accessory to murder in connection to shooting in Baton Rouge
BATON ROUGE, La. (Louisiana First) — A third suspect was arrested after a Geronimo Street shooting left one man dead.
According to the Baton Rouge Police Department, Paul Thomas, 34, was taken into custody for his alleged involvement in the deadly shooting of Kevin Dale Evans, 40. Thomas was charged with accessory after the fact of second-degree murder.
Thomas is accused of helping Joshua Mancusi-Ungaro, 19, avoid authorities after Evans' murder. Joshua was arrested on April 17 and charged with second-degree murder and illegal use of weapons.
Police arrested Joshua's aunt, Hazel Mancusi-Ungaro, 37, who was charged with accessory after the fact of second-degree murder in connection with the case on May 20.
BRPD shared that Evans' friends performed a welfare check when they found his body on April 6.
This is an ongoing investigation.
Senator Padilla kicked out of press conference
Preps for 250th birthday of the Army underway
Johnson, heckled by Democrats, backs censure for Padilla
Man charged with accessory to murder in connection to shooting in Baton Rouge
New park to open soon in North Baton Rouge
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Padilla faults ‘BS' claims, says Noem ‘misinformation' pushed him to intervene
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who was handcuffed by security Thursday after interrupting a press conference in Los Angeles held by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said 'misinformation' from the secretary led him to speak out, adding that many claims about his actions are 'all BS.' Sitting for an interview with 'Pod Save America,' Padilla said a planned briefing he was set to have was delayed because some of those he was to meet with were appearing with Noem at her press conference. 'So as we're waiting, waiting, I say, 'Well, they haven't been responding to our inquiries and our letters. Maybe we go listen in and see if they have anything new to say,'' he said. Padilla said he was 'literally being escorted' by a National Guard service member and an FBI agent and that he was allowed into the room. 'They open the door for me. I'm standing in the back. Trying to listen, you know, I don't want to get in front of the cameras or in front of the reporters and just the rhetoric is too much. Not the first time, but the second time they claim that Donald Trump and Secretary Noem is here to liberate the people of Los Angeles from the governor and from the mayor — that's when I spoke up, right? I had a question to ask. I wanna call 'em out on their misinformation,' Padilla said. 'Anybody who's seen the video knows that I repeatedly introduced myself. They knew who I was. I was not lunging at the secretary. I was, you know, halfway through the back of the room on one side trying to get a question out,' he added. 'It took all of maybe half a second for multiple agents to be on me … and shoved out the door and before I know it, I'm on my knees, I'm on the ground getting in handcuffs.' Administration officials said Noem's security detail acted appropriately by responding to an unknown figure, claiming he did not identify himself despite footage showing him saying 'I'm Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary.' They have also criticized him for not wearing his Senate pin — something lawmakers wear at the Capitol to help them be identified by U.S. Capitol Police when moving through the building. 'Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theater-kid stunt — but it's telling that Democrats are more riled up about Padilla than they are about the violent riots and assaults on law enforcement in LA,' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that also accused Padilla of storming a press conference and lunging toward Noem. Padilla on the podcast said he was wearing a shirt with the U.S. Senate logo on it when he entered the room. 'It says U.S. Senate. And if you watch the video, I repeatedly introduced myself. So this is all BS. It's all spin.' Padilla also discussed his meeting with Noem after the press conference, saying it was the first time the two have ever spoken and yielded few answers to questions he asked. 'That's why despite being in handcuffs one minute when being offered a meeting with her, an audience with her, to the next, I said yes, because I was there to do a job, right? I'm a member of the United States Senate. I have questions. I'm requesting information. And if that's what it took to finally get an opportunity to ask those questions and get some information, then that's why I took it,' Padilla said. He said the discussion lasted about 10 minutes. 'The big takeaway here is if they're willing to — if a senator asking a question scares them so much that they'll deploy agents to put a United States senator in handcuffs, imagine what they're doing to people out there, maybe subject to an immigration raid, who have a question … may be requesting their lawyer but not getting that opportunity,' he said. 'These are dangerous times for the United States of America.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Trump Accidentally Reveals a Dark MAGA Truth—and Hands Dems an Opening
This week, President Donald Trump admitted on Truth Social that his mass deportations are hurting farmers and the economy. Those removals are 'taking very good, longtime workers away' from farms and hotels, Trump declared, adding that those workers are proving 'impossible to replace.' To be clear, Trump was talking about his own immigration policies. That's a stunning acknowledgment that Trump's forced mass removals are targeting hard-working folks and that those undocumented immigrants aren't taking Americans' jobs. But it's also functionally an admission of political vulnerability. Trump plainly grasps that his deportations are now perceived—accurately—as needlessly targeting good people who are contributing vitally to our economy and society, and not primarily the violent 'criminal migrant' class that Trump and Stephen Miller keep insisting they're removing. If you doubt this, then go listen to vulnerable House Republicans on the matter. In a new letter that's gotten almost zero media attention, six of them effectively reveal that they now see Trump's deportations as a political problem along exactly those lines. Democrats who worry about taking on this issue should ask themselves: If even Republicans are showing fear on it, isn't it time to drop the skittishness and engage already? The letter—which six House Republicans sent to acting Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons—openly calls on ICE to redirect its deportation resources toward 'convicted criminal aliens' and away from undocumented immigrants who are not convicted criminals. Naturally, the letter goes through the motions of hailing Trump's glorious toughness and infallibility on immigration. But these Republicans also state that they are 'concerned' that Trump's 'limited resources may be stretched to pursue individuals that do not constitute an immediate threat to public safety': Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives.… We need to give absolute priority to every violent offender and convicted criminal illegal alien present in our nation. Diverting limited resources to other objectives puts our national security at risk. Consider what this really means. These Republicans are admitting forthrightly that deportations that sweep widely—beyond convicted criminals—take resources away from pursuing the dangerous and violent, and that this makes us less safe, and that this is precisely Trump's policy. The letter is signed by representatives like David Valadao of California, Gabe Evans of Colorado, Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, and several others. Those are among the most vulnerable Republicans in next year's midterm elections. Now, anyone who understands politics will get that these members are putting out this letter so their local papers will report on how 'concerned' they are about removals hitting their districts' local businesses. In the end, they'll enthusiastically back whatever Trump does. But this is nonetheless a revealing moment. To see why, note that Miller, who is reportedly raging about lagging arrests and deportations, is shrieking wildly at ICE officials, commanding them to round up as many migrants as possible by searching for day laborers in Home Depot parking lots. The key point here is that to boost those numbers, Trump and Miller have to go after noncriminal migrants. There aren't enough criminals around to pad the numbers, and targeting noncriminals is less resource-intensive. In other words, Miller is deliberately choosing to focus more resources on noncriminals—and thus away from dangerous criminals. Law enforcement insiders have leaked word of their anger over exactly this. Which is what these Republicans are obliquely criticizing. In so doing, what they're really demonstrating is that Trump-Miller-MAGA propaganda is failing. To get voters to support mass removals, Trump and Miller have relentlessly smeared targeted migrants as uniformly dangerous criminals. But polls show that majorities oppose removing undocumented longtime residents, people with jobs, and those who don't have a criminal record. The public is even souring on deportations more broadly. And as NBC's Natasha Korecki reports, headlines about deported families and other deeply sympathetic cases are growing more common. If this weren't becoming a major political problem, vulnerable Republicans would not have to distance themselves from all of it. Which raises a question: If those Republicans fear the politics of mass deportations, then why can't Democrats engage on them more vocally? Trump has himself now admitted to precisely the same thing as those Republicans did: His mass deportations are sweeping up countless people who make essential contributions to economies and communities, to the detriment of our country. Yet after that admission, we saw only a handful of perfunctory statements from Democrats about it. This is puzzling because Trump's admission repudiates MAGA ideology and politics at a very profound level. A core MAGA tenet is the idea that undocumented immigrants must be forcibly removed because their presence is taking jobs from Americans who are now forced to molder away in idleness and social stagnation. In some iterations of this—see JD Vance's lament to Ross Douthat in 2024—elites are treacherously in on this scheme. In this mythology, those elites deliberately avoid employing American workers—while sneering at them as lazy and entitled, to boot—precisely because they have the option of hiring undocumented immigrants. But Trump's own admission—and to some degree that of these vulnerable House Republicans—undercuts that story. As Trump himself concedes, there is not a rush of Americans looking to fill vacancies left by deported immigrants. Some MAGA proponents might argue that many undocumented immigrants still take Americans' jobs, even if farmworkers do not. But this has largely been debunked. And as Andrew Egger notes, Miller appears to have quickly persuaded Trump to clarify that he isn't backing off mass deportations; Miller clearly understood how damaging Trump's admission truly was. Indeed, Trump's confession arguably undermines the broader zero-sum foundation of the MAGA worldview, which holds that any undocumented immigrant's gain is an American worker's loss. The reality is that undocumented immigrants often complement the American workforce. Without realizing it, Trump admitted this himself. Why can't Democrats point this out? House Republicans in swing territory have openly demonstrated their vulnerability to these arguments. As they've revealed, in places like Miami and the suburbs of Los Angeles and Denver—home to those GOP districts, where control of the House will be decided—opposition to cruel and indiscriminate mass deportations is growing. Trump has unwittingly produced the perfect weapon to make the case. So what's the holdup here, Democrats?
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Padilla pushes back against Noem's claim he barged into news conference
California Sen. Alex Padilla has continued to defend himself and refute the claims by the Trump administration that he crashed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's news conference before federal officers shoved him outside the room, pushed him onto the floor and handcuffed him. Padilla, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, provided more details about the incident Thursday night during an interview on MSNBC -- where he said he was not a threat and merely raised his voice to ask a question. MORE: Democrats condemn senator being pushed down and handcuffed at Noem press conference The senator claimed he did not barge into the news conference, as alleged by Noem, but rather he was in the federal building for an approved scheduled briefing with representatives of the Northern Command. He said the meeting was delayed by Noem's news conference, where she discussed the use of the National Guard in the city. Padilla said he decided to go listen to the news conference and asked the National Guard and FBI agents with him if he could go. "We're, the whole time, being escorted in this federal building by somebody from the National Guard, somebody from the FBI. I've gone through screening. This is a federal building. And so, I tell them, 'Let's go listen to the press conference.' They escort me over to that room," Padilla told MSNBC. "The folks that were escorting me in the building walked me over. I didn't even open the door. The door was opened for me. And I spent a few minutes in the back of the room just listening in until the rhetoric, the political rhetoric got to be too much to take. So, I spoke up," he later added. MORE: Video Sen. Alex Padilla speaks after being forcibly removed from DHS Press Conference During her news conference, Noem claimed she was going to "liberate" Los Angeles "from the socialists and the burdensome leadership this governor and mayor have placed on this country and this city." Padilla told MSNBC that he needed to speak out and said he introduced himself before the officers grabbed him and pushed him out of the room as onlookers filmed the incident. Noem said law enforcement reacted because he took steps toward her without identifying himself. She told Fox News Thursday that no one knew who he was and that he was "lunging forward." Video of the incident captures Padilla identifying himself as he is pushed out of the room; it's not clear from video if he said his name before the incident or as he approached the podium. Padilla was wearing a navy blue polo shirt that had the U.S. Senate logo under a navy blue jacket. He said he was not wearing a Senate pin at the time of the incident. Padilla was not detained or arrested and he and Noem had a private conversation for "10-15 minutes" after the incident, according to both the senator and the secretary. Noem said that Padilla will likely not be charged. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday said Padilla should be "ashamed of his childish behavior." "He crashed the middle of an official press conference being held by a cabinet secretary, recklessly lunged toward the podium where @Sec_Noem was speaking, and then refused to leave the room and follow the directions of law enforcement officers," Leavitt posted to X. Democratic senators quickly came to Padilla's defense Thursday, calling out Noem and the officers for mishandling the senator. "This is an administration that has no respect for our democracy, for our institutions, for the separation of powers, for a co-equal branch of government Sen. Adam Schiff said. MORE: Democrats condemn senator being pushed down and handcuffed at Noem press conference House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans chastised Padilla. Johnson claimed that censure might be needed. A vote to censure does not hold any power beyond a public condemnation of the member's behavior and it does not deny the member privileges. Sen. Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Thursday evening that he had spoken with Padilla and the Senate Sergeant At Arms and had attempted to reach Noem and said he was gathering facts. "We want to get the full scope of what happened and do what we would do in any incident like this involving a senator, that is, try to gather all of the relevant information," he said. When asked if he thought what occurred was appropriate based on what he had so far seen, Thune said, "That's all I've got to say." Padilla pushes back against Noem's claim he barged into news conference originally appeared on