The wife of a man fatally shot while driving down Goodwood Boulevard on Saturday was on a cell phone with him when the gunfire erupted, police said.
Brent Cole, who was apparently lost while trying to find his hotel, told his wife, Karen Cole, that someone was shooting at him, a family friend said.
Moments later he said he thought he’d been hit, said Sandi Davis, the friend Karen Cole called on a landline from her home in DeQuincy while she was on the cell phone with her husband.
Then, Davis said, she heard him moaning, she heard sirens and she heard someone say he was still breathing but had been shot in the stomach.
Police said they don’t know why Cole — a 39-year-old DeQuincy man who had driven to Baton Rouge to attend church — was killed.
“We are baffled as to what may have caused this,” police spokesman Sgt. Don Kelly said, adding that the area where Cole was shot is generally pretty safe.
What police do know is that the first round of shots fired at Cole’s 2002 burgundy Saturn occurred about 8:15 p.m. at Independence and Lobdell boulevards, Kelly said.
The second round of shots were fired near the intersection of Goodwood and Lobdell boulevards, Kelly said.
Police found Cole wounded in his car, which was in the middle of Goodwood.
Cole was taken to a hospital, where he died.
The doctors tried to save him, Davis said. He was in surgery for three hours.
Cole traveled to Baton Rouge almost every weekend to play the bass guitar at First Pentecostal Church on Jones Creek Road, said Davis, the wife of Dan Davis, who pastors the church.
He always stayed at the Holiday Inn at 9940 Airline Highway because the church had some rooms there, Sandi Davis said. But he never checked in Saturday night.
Cole went to Baker to look at a house he and his wife were considering buying, she said. The couple was thinking about moving to the Baton Rouge area with their two sons, Aaron, 13, and Andrew, 10.
Living in DeQuincy, a town of only about 4,000 residents, all his life, Cole didn’t know his way around Baton Rouge very well, Davis said. So, when he was driving to the Holiday Inn from Baker he got lost.
David Hennigan, the pastor at The Pentecostal Church of DeQuincy, said Cole could have gotten lost in DeQuincy.
“He was a real small, hometown boy,” he said. “That’s just the kind of guy he was.”
Cole played the trumpet at The Pentecostal Church of DeQuincy when he wasn’t in Baton Rouge, said Hennigan, who met Cole when he was a boy.
He also worked at a machine shop in Sulphur and had worked at several grocery stores in DeQuincy throughout his life, he said.
“We all loved him here,” he said. “He was one of the purest young men. He was DeQuincy’s favorite son.”
Dan and Sandi Davis met Cole 20 years ago when he was part of the All State Youth Choir of the United Pentecostal Church, a program the couple began and ran for several years.
“He was a highly talented young man,” Dan Davis said. “He was a contributor. Everything he was a part of he made better.”
Cole was dedicated to the church, his family and music, he said.
“Not once in those 20 years has there been the slightest hint that anything else was going on,” Davis said, adding that if there was Cole was hiding it very well.
As to why Cole was shot and killed, Davis said, “it’s hard to wrap your mind around.”
He said it could have been a case of mistaken identity, road rage or purely random.
Hopefully, he said, someone who saw the shooting or whatever led up to it will come forward.
Police are asking anyone with information about the killing to call them at (225) 389-4869 or Crime Stoppers at (225) 344-7867.
Contributions to Brent Cole’s family can be made to The Pentecostal Church at 2828 Jones Creek Road.


Source/Photo: The Advocate