A Baton Rouge judge on Wednesday convicted a man of shooting a retired BRPD policeman four years ago when the officer intervened in a vehicle break-in near his home.
After listening to three days of testimony, District Judge Gail Horne Ray deliberated 45 minutes before finding Craig Leyland Willis guilty of manslaughter.
Willis shot and killed Ryan Gibbs Hord during an April 26, 2020 encounter about 300 yards from Hord’s doorstep, prosecutors said. Hord, 41, spent years working as an officer for the Baton Rouge Police Department before he retired from law enforcement to start his own construction company.
The ex-officer confronted Willis moments after he was spotted on security cameras trying to break into a pickup truck parked in Hord’s driveway in the 100 block of Richland Avenue.
Wednesday’s verdict was the final culmination of a bench trial that Willis, 33, opted for this week. He asked Judge Ray to listen to evidence and decide if he was guilty of second-degree murder, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and simple burglary in connection with Hord’s killing.
In ruling Willis guilty of manslaughter, Ray spared Willis the automatic life sentence he faced if he was convicted of murder.
The judge found him guilty of the two remaining counts and set a Oct. 30 court date for Willis’ sentencing. He faces up to 72 years combined in prison on the three charges.
“Today marked a significant day of closure for me and my family,” said Hord’s son, Blaine, who was 15 at the time. “Justice was finally served after four and a half years of delays in the court system. There isn't a day that goes by that we don't think of my dad, your neighbor, our friend, Ryan Hord.”
As the verdict was read, Blaine Hord sat in the courtroom with several family members, including his father’s fiancé, Natalie Butler. Both of them took the stand to testify during the this week’s trial.
“My dad, Ryan, was a staple in the community,” Blaine said in his statement. “From proactively cutting the neighbor's grass to building community gardens at the Bernard Terrace Elementary School to donating his time and resources to create the Capital Heights Pocket Park, my dad showed his love in everything he did to give back selflessly. I, like many, strive to follow in his footsteps each and every day by giving back to my community.”
According to trial testimony, Butler notified Hord shortly before midnight that she saw a man trying to break into his pickup truck through security cameras. Willis tugged on one of the door handles and continued walking south down Richland Avenue when he couldn’t get in because the truck was locked.
After Butler showed Hord the surveillance footage, he got into his truck and began driving southbound. Prosecutors said Willis had broken into a neighbor’s Ford Focus three houses down the road by the time Hord confronted him a little over a minute later.
The two men exchanged gunfire when Hord got of his truck and ordered Willis to get on the ground. Prosecutors said Willis emptied all eight rounds from a stolen 9mm Smith & Wesson, striking Hord in the chest before he fled and left Hord for dead.
The victim’s fiancé rushed to his aid, but he died at the scene.
Willis was wounded during the shootout and police later captured him one block east on Edison Street.
Willis was released from prison 9 ½ months prior to the shooting after serving 10 years on a 2009 armed robbery conviction. He was prohibited from owning or possessing a gun.
Willis and his defense team insisted that he was forced to shoot Hord in self-defense after the deceased fired shots at him first. But prosecutors told the judge that the recent prison stint served as Willis’ motive to gun Hord down.
“His actions come down to one simple thing,” Assistant District Attorney Kendall Thomas said to close out the state’s case. “That night, Craig Willis did not want to go back to jail and he did whatever he had to do, including killing Ryan Hord.”
In statements he made to police while recovering in a hospital days after the shooting, Willis denied he was attempting to break into vehicles, instead telling investigators he was in the Mid-City neighborhood that night selling marijuana. His defense attorney, Hafiz Folami, disputed the state’s claims that Willis ever entered the Ford Focus and said investigators never found DNA or fingerprint evidence that proved Willis burglarized the car.
Defense played a recorded phone call Willis made from jail in which he stressed that he unloaded his gun in self-defense after Hord pulled up on him with the high beams of his pickup pointed at him, told him to get on the ground, tried to hit him with the butt of his .357 revolver, then took aim at him.
“I wasn’t looking for no [expletive] to really go down like that,” Willis said in the phone call. “I didn’t really want to shoot the man. But when he shot me first, that’s what made me pull on the trigger.”
Lashaunda Boyd, an investigator for the East Baton Rouge District Attorneys Office, said there were several key inconsistencies between what Willis said during the recorded conversation and the details he gave investigators at the hospital.
“Mr. Willis had several choices he could’ve made that night,” Assistant District Attorney Jamie Triggs said. “He chose the ones that would lead to the death of Ryan Hord.”
Folami argued that Hord was “still pretending to be an officer” when he descended upon Willis armed with a gun and a flashlight. He told Judge Ray it was Hord who instigated the fatal encounter after Willis had left his property and was hundreds of yards away. Noting that Hord was no longer on the police force, he suggested the victim should have called 911 and allowed law enforcement to handle the situation instead of trying to make a citizen’s arrest. He later argued that even convicted felons have a right to use a firearm to defend themselves when they’re facing imminent danger.
“Was Mr. Willis a threat when Ryan went to seek him and hunted him down like a dog,” he asked the judge.
“What Mr. Hord did was vigilante justice going after him,” Folami argued later. “This is not the comic books or a movie. You can’t just go after people like that. Call the police, that’s what they’re there for.”
Court records show Willis pleaded guilty to theft of a firearm in December 2021, a charge that stemmed from an auto theft less than two weeks before the shooting. Willis broke into a vehicle in the 800 block of Summer Drive and stole a Smith & Wesson handgun.
Prosecutors said Wednesday that was not the same stolen gun Willis used in the shootout with Hord.
Ryan Hord, left
Editor's note: A previous version of this story misidentified East Baton Rouge Assistant Public Defender Hafiz Folami. The Advocate regrets this error.