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"Michael Gerardi was 25 years old. He graduated from Brother Martin High School. He lived with his mother and father in Slidell. He worked at T.J.'s Seafood. He was a plant manager at Pointe-a-la-Hache, and on May 2, 1995, at about 10:26 in the evening, Shareef Cousin ended that. He ended his ambitions; he ended his dreams..." --New Orleans assistant district attorney Roger Jordan, in his opening statement at Cousin's murder trial
When Michael Gerardi arrived for his first date with Connie Babin, he brought a single red rose. Connie and Mike had met at a Mardi Gras party in the French Quarter; a day or so later he called her up and asked her out to dinner. Connie was 37 years old--a dozen years older than Mike--but there was something about her that made him think about settling down and raising a family. "Momma, this may be the one," he had told his mother.
The couple went to a hamburger restaurant in the Quarter called Port of Call, on the corner of Esplanade and Dauphine. They left the restaurant around 10 p.m. and walked down Esplanade toward Mike's pickup truck, half a block away.
It was then that Connie noticed three young men coming across Esplanade toward Dauphine in the same direction that she and Mike were headed. "I tried to relay my feelings to Mike to let him know that I was uncomfortable, that I did not want to continue walking," she would testify later in court. "I was holding him back, tugging on his arm, and he thought that meant I was cold, so he proceeded to take off his jacket, and I said 'no' and indicated with my head toward the three gentlemen...I was looking at the one that was closest to me."
On the stand, Connie identified the "closest" one as Cousin, saying he was 5 ft. away. They made "eye contact," and he "broke eye contact first." Next, she says she saw "a gold glint or flicker" in his teeth as he said something to one of his companions. (Cousin does have gold caps on his teeth.) She and Gerardi continued walking toward Gerardi's truck. The killer Connie identified as Cousin stopped, bent down and "fiddled" with his boot. (Police were unable to find boots that fit Cousin in his home, and he says he doesn't own any.) Gerardi sent Connie to the passenger's side of the truck and headed toward the driver's side. She looked back to see the killer coming straight for Mike, who told her to "go away." She began to run, then looked back.
"[The killer] just put his arm up and shot Michael in the face. There was a pop," Connie testified. She said she was 10 ft. away. "Shareef, the gun--he was holding his arm with the gun in it," she said in court. "He looked toward me for a few seconds, and I remember thinking he was going to shoot me...I saw that Michael's legs were bent, but he wasn't falling. Shareef was holding him up...I couldn't imagine why he was doing that, and then I realized that he was probably taking his money." Connie ran back into a side door of Port of Call and called 911. Then she went back out into the street and knelt beside Mike's lifeless body and held his hand until police arrived.
Later, Connie identified Cousin from a group of photos police laid out in front of her. In court, prosecutor Jordan asked her if she had any doubt that Cousin was the killer. She said she had none. Jordan asked her to "point out to the jury the person that you saw shoot Mike Gerardi."