An Orange County Superior Court judge on Friday, June 18, revoked the bail of the man accused of fatally shooting a 6-year-old boy on the 55 Freeway in Orange last month while postponing the consideration of reducing the $500,000 bail of the suspected driver until her background is investigated and her mental health considered.
Marcus Anthony Eriz, 24, and Wynne Lee, 23, both pleaded not guilty to the charges they face through their attorneys. His bail had been $2 million.
Her attorney said her bail amount for the crimes she is accused of is excessively high and he wants it drastically lowered. The judge will again consider her bail on Friday, June 25.
Eriz has been charged with murder and shooting into an inhabited vehicle in the shooting along the northbound 55. Lee has been charged with being an accessory after the fact and a misdemeanor count of concealing a firearm inside a vehicle.
Eriz’s attorney, Randy Bethune, said Eriz didn’t intend on posting bail. Still, Orange County Superior Court Judge Larry Yellin revoked it, noting that after Eriz purportedly discovered his shot killed Aiden Leos, he hide the car and the gun, shaved his beard and began wearing his long hair pulled back.
“The court finds it very alarming,” the judge said of an allegation that Eriz was involved in a second road-rage confrontation following the fatal shooting. “It seems to me that Mr. Eriz is a complete danger to the community, to society.”
Prosecutors want Lee’s bail to remain at $500,000. They acknowledged that there was no indication that she took part in violence herself, or that she made any attempt to hide her appearance after the shooting. But they also argued that she kept driving with Eriz despite knowing he carried a loaded gun, and she didn’t prevent him from hiding her vehicle once she learned police were searching for it.
“It is is not as if she was someone who just happened to be his designated driver,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer told the judge. “She was actively aware and knowledgeable about his activity.”
Lee’s attorney, Tom Nocella, said there was no indication she tried to flee the state after learning she and Eriz were the subjects of a manhunt. She didn’t have a thought-out plan to hide from law enforcement, the defense attorney added.
“We are not dealing with sophistication,” Nocella said. “Ms. Lee didn’t change her appearance. She went to work. … This is stupidity more than anything else.”
Based on the charges she is facing, Nocella said, Lee’s bail should be $20,000 or $25,000. The defense attorney said Lee could receive financial assistance from her parents, who could help make sure she gets to court hearings.
Judge Yellin said he was inclined to reduce Lee’s bail, but he wanted more information about where she would be living and working if she were to post bond. He ordered the court’s pre-trial services department to put together a report addressing those questions, which at the suggestion of prosecutors will also include a look at her mental health.
Lee has had difficulties in the past with her mental health, chronicled in a 2015 Kaiser Health News story. She opened up about struggling to live up to her parents’ academic goals and her feelings of isolation starting at age 12. Her outlook improved when she confided in her mother during her sophomore year at Diamond Bar High School.
The morning hearing in Santa Ana was the second time Eriz and Lee appeared in the courtroom virtually, as the pair are in a mandatory 14-day quarantine at the county jail.
Lee’s parents, who attended the hearing, declined to comment.
Friday’s hearing was on the heels of prosecutors filing court papers this week that offered details about what they say occurred before, during and after the fatal shooting.
On May 21, Aiden’s mother, Joanna Cloonan, was driving the boy to kindergarten around 8 a.m. when her Chevrolet Sonic was cut off and nearly hit by a Volkswagen Golf Sportwagen driven by Lee, according to prosecutors. Lee made a peace sign gesture toward Cloonan, prosecutors said, but the mother, when changing lanes near Chapman Avenue in Orange, put up her middle finger while passing the VolksWagen.
The mother then heard a “loud bang,” followed by her son saying “Ow” from his booster seat in the rear of the Chevrolet, according to the court filing. Within the hour, Aiden was dead from a chest wound.
Prosecutors say that after the shooting Eriz and Lee continued the drive to their jobs in Highland, where they worked before returning home to Costa Mesa. They kept up the routine the following week, prosecutors said, at one point getting into a second “altercation” on the 91 Freeway when Eriz flashed a gun at another driver.
Eriz later told investigators that it wasn’t until May 28 that he learned of Aiden’s death, prosecutors said, when he read an online article after a co-worker remarked that Lee’s Volkswagen looked like the vehicle police were searching for. During that same interview, Eriz told investigators that he immediately “knew he was responsible for the boy’s death” and “told (Lee) about his revelation,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors allege that Eriz hid the Volkswagen in a relative’s garage, and he and Lee began taking Eriz’s truck to work. Eriz, along with Lee, applied for new jobs, prosecutors added.
It isn’t clear exactly what landed Eriz and Lee on law enforcement’s radar. But they were taken into custody on June 6 at their Costa Mesa apartment. Officers reported recovering both the car and the gun.
The arrest came a day after Leos’ memorial service and the day before his burial.
In charging Eriz with murder, prosecutors plan to argue a “depraved heart theory,” saying he acted with reckless disregard, knowing he was creating an unusually high risk of death to another person.
