A Husband 𝚂𝚑𝚘𝚘𝚝𝚜 His Wife Point-blank In The Head After Finding Out She Ate His Burger | HO

On the eastern edge of Shreveport, Louisiana, there’s a mobile home lot where the gravel stays rutted no matter how many times it gets smoothed, where porch lights buzz and dogs bark at nothing, and where you can hear other people’s lives through thin walls without trying.

The trailer belonged to Deshawn Lockage, 40, a warehouse laborer on rotating night shifts, and Tamika Hollands, 37, a motel housekeeper off Highway 80. They’d lived there for years, long enough for neighbors to stop pretending they didn’t know the sound of their arguments.

That morning, the thing that pushed their unstable relationship over the edge wasn’t a paycheck or a cheating rumor or a slammed door. It was a fast-food burger—gone, posted about, laughed at—and the kind of humiliation that a certain type of person treats like an emergency.

Sometimes the smallest insult becomes a match only because gasoline was already poured.

Deshawn and Tamika didn’t have steady footing. He worked unloading freight, sometimes nights, sometimes not, depending on the schedule and who got bumped. She cleaned rooms at a budget motel, the kind where towels disappear and managers ask you to do more with less and act grateful for it. Their income came in uneven waves. According to residents, arguments tied to expenses, drinking, and jealousy had grown more frequent, more predictable, like weather.

Police records later confirmed multiple responses to their address during the prior year. Most calls involved loud disputes or verbal threats. In two cases, officers documented minor physical contact—Tamika saying she’d been shoved or grabbed—but no visible injuries were recorded. No one pressed it far enough to become a case that changed anything. Neighbors described a pattern: conflicts intensifying late at night after one or both returned from work or drinking. By the time January arrived, the trailer had become a pressure cooker that vented in ugly bursts.

The final sequence began the night of January 13. Deshawn came home from a late shift with a small fast-food order. Later interviews suggested he bought himself the kind of burger Tamika usually requested, but gave her something different. It sounds petty written down, but inside the trailer it landed like a statement: you don’t get what you want; you get what I decide.

An argument followed. Neighbors heard raised voices and the scrape of furniture. Tamika told responding officers later that Deshawn shoved her and was “trying to scare” her. Deshawn refused to provide a statement. He was arrested for disorderly conduct and spent the night in holding. He was released shortly after sunrise on January 14 with no charges filed.

He walked back into the lot with morning light on his face and last night’s anger still sitting in his chest like a hot coin.

That was the moment everything changed.

When Deshawn returned to the trailer, Tamika was awake. She’d already left earlier that morning to pick up items from a nearby convenience store. At 7:18 a.m., she posted on Facebook. It wasn’t hidden. It wasn’t subtle. It was the kind of post that feels like a joke when you’re surrounded by friends and feels like disrespect when you’re trapped in a house with someone who needs to be respected to breathe.

When Deshawn opened an aging laptop, he saw the post displayed on Tamika’s profile: a photo of her eating what she identified as his remaining burger, with a caption implying he shouldn’t leave food unattended. Several acquaintances reacted with laughing emojis and short comments. The internet did what it always does—turned a private frustration into public entertainment in two taps.

Later interviews revealed Deshawn stared at the screen for several minutes without speaking. No scrolling. No typing. Just staring, like he was waiting for the image to change into something else. Like he couldn’t believe humiliation could be so simple.

In his mind, the burger wasn’t food. It was control. It was her telling people he couldn’t even keep a sandwich in his own house. It was her laughing at him where others could see. And for a man already fighting to hold onto work, pride, and a roof, that kind of laughter can feel like a threat.

At approximately 7:35 a.m., Deshawn left the trailer and crossed the gravel lot to Willie Braxton’s unit. Braxton was 54, a retired roofer who’d lived in the park over a decade, known for keeping old tools and equipment stored in his shed—things people asked to borrow when they didn’t have their own. Among those things was an aging .38 caliber revolver.

Braxton later told officers Deshawn approached calmly.

“Willie,” Deshawn said, voice steady, “can I borrow your revolver?”

Willie blinked, taking a second like he didn’t hear right. “For what?”

Deshawn nodded toward the dumpsters, like the answer was obvious. “Some people been messing around back there. I just need to scare them off.”

Willie hesitated. In his initial statement he’d say Deshawn didn’t appear intoxicated or injured. He didn’t look frantic. He looked decided. And that’s what made Willie’s hesitation fold into agreement—because danger often announces itself with chaos, and Deshawn didn’t look chaotic.

“All right,” Willie finally said, “but you don’t do nothing stupid with it. You hear me?”

Deshawn took the revolver and walked straight back.

A few minutes can be the distance between borrowing and destroying.

That was the moment everything changed.

Deshawn returned to the trailer with the revolver concealed inside his coat. Based on the timeline reconstructed from witness accounts and the 911 call, only a few minutes passed between borrowing the firearm and what happened next. When he entered, Tamika was in the kitchen area, rinsing a cup in the sink. There was no evidence she knew he’d gotten a weapon. There were no signs of an immediate struggle. The previous night’s disorder—tipped items, scattered clothing, an overturned chair—still sat in the space like yesterday’s anger never left.

The moment itself was quick. Too quick for bargaining. Too quick for the kind of argument that lets you back away. At close range, Deshawn raised the revolver and fired three shots into the side of Tamika’s head. The pattern of wounds and where she fell indicated she collapsed almost instantly near the lower cabinets.

Deshawn placed the revolver on the counter next to a small toaster and stepped outside.

He didn’t have a mobile phone. He walked several yards to a neighbor’s trailer and used their landline to call 911. The call was logged at 8:02 a.m. According to the dispatcher’s later report, Deshawn stated in a calm tone that he had shot “his woman” and was waiting outside.

That calm would become one of the strangest details in the file. Not because calm proves anything by itself, but because it showed he wasn’t confused about what he’d done. He wasn’t asking if she was okay. He wasn’t asking what to do. He was reporting a fact like he’d just taken out the trash.

When officers arrived, Deshawn was seated on the trailer steps with his hands visible. He offered no resistance. Responding deputies secured him and cleared the residence, finding Tamika deceased on the kitchen floor. Neighbors gathered at a distance, murmuring. Several said they heard the three shots but initially assumed it was noise from the roadway.

Willie Braxton approached deputies and immediately said, “I lent him that gun minutes ago.” His voice carried the panic of a man realizing he’d handed over a tool he thought would be used for posturing, not finality. Deputies separated him for a formal statement.

Inside, the crime scene unit documented the trailer in stages—photographs, diagrams, measurements. The revolver was collected; the cylinder partially open, three chambers containing spent casings. Technicians noted the interior’s disorder appeared consistent with an earlier argument rather than a fresh struggle. No forced entry. No signs of a fight that moved through rooms.

On the counter beside the sink, they located a cracked mobile phone. Nearby, an older laptop sat open. Its screen displayed Tamika’s Facebook profile with the burger post still visible. Both devices were photographed and packaged as evidence.

Tamika’s last laugh on the internet became a frozen image in a homicide file.

That was the moment everything changed.

Detectives Quinn Yarborough and Darius Milton canvassed the surrounding trailers, keeping witnesses separate. Every contact became a small written summary—names, ages, jobs—because in places like this, your employment is often the only stable identifier you have.

Lyanna Budro, 31, a motel clerk, said she heard a single yell followed by three rapid bangs. She couldn’t give the exact time but placed it after daylight. “They always fighting,” she told detectives. “Jobs, money. Always.” She said she’d seen patrol cars at that trailer several times over the past year.

Samuel Graves, 35, a forklift operator, told detectives he saw Deshawn walking back toward his trailer shortly before the shots. “He walked stiff,” Samuel said. “Like he made up his mind.” He didn’t see a weapon. He just noticed Deshawn didn’t acknowledge him, didn’t look around.

Then detectives spoke with Willie Braxton. Willie confirmed Deshawn asked to borrow the revolver, claiming people were “messing around” the lot and he wanted it to scare them off. Willie said he allowed Deshawn to take it on the understanding it would be used only as a warning. “I didn’t think he was going to go in there and do that,” Willie said, voice cracking into anger at himself.

With core witness statements secured, detectives transported Deshawn to the parish substation. He was advised of his rights and agreed to an initial interview. His account was brief and direct.

“I got released,” Deshawn said. “I went home. I saw her post about my burger. I lost it. I went to Willie’s, got the gun, came back, shot her in the kitchen.”

Yarborough asked him, “Why get a gun? Why not leave, cool off somewhere else?”

Deshawn’s answer was flat. “I wasn’t thinking past the anger.”

Detectives noted his voice remained even, his expression barely changing while he described firing the shots. He didn’t claim self-defense. He didn’t say Tamika had a weapon. He didn’t say it was an accident. He didn’t say he feared for his life. He said he got angry. He went and got a gun. He shot her.

And in his head, the burger post had become permission.

That was the moment everything changed.

The second interrogation took place on January 15, 2019. Detectives advised Deshawn of his rights again. He agreed to continue without counsel. Yarborough asked for an hour-by-hour account of the previous morning. Deshawn repeated the sequence: saw the Facebook post, felt humiliated, walked to Willie’s for the revolver, returned, shot Tamika in the kitchen. He described it as impulsive, said he “wasn’t thinking.”

Milton challenged the impulse story with a quieter kind of pressure.

“How long did you look at the laptop before you left?” Milton asked.

Deshawn first said, “A minute.”

Milton held his gaze. “Was it a minute? Or was it several?”

Deshawn’s jaw tightened. “Maybe… several.”

“Did you consider leaving?” Yarborough asked. “Calling someone? Going to cool down?”

Deshawn shook his head. “I didn’t think about options.”

Yarborough leaned forward slightly. “But you made choices. You walked to another trailer. You asked for a firearm. You walked back. That’s a sequence.”

Deshawn’s posture stiffened. “She always pushed me,” he said. “That post… that was the last straw.”

Detectives questioned whether he planned to use the gun before entering the trailer. He denied having a plan, repeating that anger guided him. Yarborough documented where Deshawn avoided specifics about the moments right before the shooting, where his words got vague, where he leaned on feelings instead of facts.

While the interview continued, forensic technicians processed the laptop from the scene. They found unsent drafts Tamika wrote late on January 13. One described the police response to the prior night’s argument and her belief that Deshawn would come back “madder than before.” Another draft mentioned saving money and wanting to leave the trailer once she had enough to relocate. Never sent, but still real—proof that in her private thoughts, she was already planning an exit.

Technicians also examined a fractured ceramic plate recovered near the trash bin. A stain tested positive for blood. DNA later matched it to Deshawn, consistent with an injury from the argument the night before. Investigators categorized it as evidence of prior physical conflict, not part of the shooting itself.

Detectives contacted Raymond Ellis, 38, Tamika’s former husband, who lived in Monroe. He confirmed their daughter lived with him full-time because Tamika’s household with Deshawn was unstable. He said Tamika had discussed leaving Shreveport and moving closer to Monroe once she secured more consistent work. “She didn’t want to confront him until she had somewhere to go,” Raymond said. “She was scared how he’d react.”

Detectives interviewed Willie Braxton again. This time, Willie added a detail: months earlier, after an argument between Deshawn and Tamika, Deshawn had asked if the revolver was for sale. Willie said he declined, assuming it was talk. Detectives noted it anyway. It meant Deshawn didn’t just know Willie had a gun—he had already mentally marked Willie as a source.

The burger wasn’t the whole story. It was just the loudest moment in a longer one.

That was the moment everything changed.

About two weeks after the shooting, the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office received the full investigative file. Assistant District Attorney Kendra Roby, 39, reviewed incident reports, crime scene photographs, and interview transcripts. She noted that Deshawn consistently admitted shooting Tamika and never claimed self-defense or suggested she was armed.

Before making a charging recommendation, Roby requested more: the complete autopsy report, a compiled history of law enforcement calls to the trailer, and any available audio from earlier domestic incidents.

Dispatch logs showed six police responses to the couple’s trailer over three years. Four were verbal domestic disputes. Two involved minor physical contact with Tamika saying she’d been shoved or grabbed during arguments about money and work. No visible injuries documented. No arrests. In each case, Deshawn declined to provide a statement or said very little. Roby flagged the entries as evidence of ongoing conflict rather than a one-off tied to a burger post.

When the autopsy report arrived, it confirmed three contact gunshot wounds to Tamika’s head. The examiner noted staining and tight stippling consistent with the muzzle being pressed very close at discharge. There were no defensive wounds on her hands or arms. Toxicology showed alcohol present at a level consistent with moderate impairment, but it didn’t change the manner of death classification: homicide by firearm.

Firearms examiners test-fired the .38 and compared test bullets to those recovered. Microscopic comparison confirmed all three fatal rounds were fired from Willie Braxton’s revolver. Trigger pull was within normal range, requiring deliberate pressure. The report didn’t support accidental discharge or mechanical malfunction.

Detectives returned to the park to re-interview neighbors with focused questions about guns and prior statements. Lyanna Budro expanded her account. She reported that the night before the killing—during the argument that led to police being called—she heard Tamika say through the thin walls, “You ain’t gonna scare me no more with that gun talk.” Lyanna didn’t see a weapon then, but believed the comment referred to threats Deshawn made in earlier disputes.

Samuel Graves added a detail he hadn’t mentioned initially: months earlier, Deshawn joked near the mailboxes about “putting somebody down for real” if they embarrassed him. At the time, Samuel didn’t know how seriously to take it. Now, he did.

Investigators requested Tamika’s bank records. The previous six months showed frequent small withdrawals made shortly after her motel paychecks. In a follow-up search of the trailer, detectives recovered a plain envelope containing several folded bills in the back of her dresser drawer. The amount was modest, but it matched the withdrawal pattern and fit the narrative in her unsent drafts: saving up to leave.

When Deshawn was confronted in a brief jail interview with the savings envelope and messages about moving, he said he didn’t know she was planning to leave. He denied awareness of the hidden cash. He claimed talk about moving was just venting.

Then jail staff provided recordings of Deshawn’s holding-cell conversations, which the facility routinely monitors. In one exchange, Deshawn said Tamika was “about to walk out” and leave him “stuck with nothing.” He mentioned the lease and utilities were in her name. In another, he said she’d been “clowning” him and he was tired of her “playing with his life.” Those statements contradicted his claim that he didn’t know she intended to leave.

Roby began to see the burger post for what it was: a trigger, not the engine.

That was the moment everything changed.

As the grand jury process approached, Roby requested all recorded jail calls Deshawn made from booking through early March 2019. Investigators reviewed them, flagging anything that spoke to motive and state of mind. In one call to a cousin, Deshawn complained that people were “talking about a burger like that’s all it was.”

He said Tamika had been fixing to “clown” him, move out, blast him on Facebook, leave him broke. In another call to a longtime friend, he repeated that Tamika had the lease and the lights in her name, and if she left he’d have nowhere to go. “I’m not about to let somebody just walk off and leave me stuck,” he said.

Those words, paired with the envelope of savings, the transfer request at Tamika’s job, and the prior domestic call history, supported a theory that the killing wasn’t simply about a social media joke. It was about fear—fear of losing housing, financial support, and control over the relationship. Investigators updated the case memo to reflect that the burger post functioned as a spark in a room already filled with fumes.

Detectives obtained Tamika’s employment records from the motel off Highway 80. Payroll documents showed she’d increased her hours in the months before her death, picking up extra weekend and evening shifts. HR records showed she submitted a formal request in late December 2018 to transfer to a motel owned by the same company in Monroe, closer to the school her 10-year-old daughter attended.

Tamika’s supervisor, Carla Maddox, 43, confirmed it. “She asked about transferring,” Maddox said. “She said she was exploring options for when she moved away from Shreveport. Wanted hours that worked with school drop-offs and pickups.”

Detectives confronted Deshawn with the transfer request and Maddox’s statement. Deshawn dismissed it. “She was just talking,” he said. “She always said she would move but never did.” He denied knowledge of a firm plan. When asked about his own recorded calls—about being left stuck—he said he was “just venting.”

By then, Deshawn had a public defender, Malik Dorsey, 36. Dorsey argued to Roby that the charge should recognize heavy alcohol use, emotional humiliation, and sudden escalation, pointing to Deshawn’s immediate surrender and cooperation. He suggested the case leaned toward a heat-of-passion response and raised negotiating down to manslaughter.

Roby weighed that position against what the file showed: prior domestic incidents, Tamika’s active plans to leave, Deshawn’s earlier interest in Willie’s revolver, his decision to retrieve that specific weapon on January 14, three contact gunshot wounds, and the jail calls emphasizing dependence on Tamika’s lease and income. Roby told Dorsey the state would proceed on second-degree murder and would not reduce to manslaughter at charging.

The story people laughed at—“she ate his burger”—wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t enough.

That was the moment everything changed.

The trial of State of Louisiana v. Deshawn Lockage began in April 2020 in Caddo Parish District Court in Shreveport. Deshawn, now 41, appeared in jail clothing beside Dorsey. He was charged with second-degree murder with a firearm enhancement. Assistant District Attorney Kendra Roby led the prosecution. Jury selection addressed domestic violence, firearms, and reactions to online conflict. Twelve jurors and two alternates were sworn and instructed they had to decide whether the state proved Deshawn intentionally killed 37-year-old Tamika Hollands.

In opening statements, Roby laid out the pattern: repeated arguments, Tamika increasing income and planning a move, Deshawn’s decision to retrieve the neighbor’s revolver and fire three contact shots. She argued the shooting was driven by control and fear of being left, not by a sandwich.

Dorsey framed it as a sudden outburst. He emphasized alcohol use, humiliation over the Facebook post, Deshawn’s lack of felony history, and the fact he didn’t flee and cooperated with police. “This was blind rage,” Dorsey told jurors, “not a calculated plan.”

Detective Quinn Yarborough testified about the January 14 response: Deshawn detained outside, the admission, the timeline. The jury heard the 911 recording where Deshawn calmly told the dispatcher he had shot his woman and gave the address.

Crime scene personnel presented photos and diagrams: kitchen layout, Tamika’s body position, the revolver on the counter with three spent chambers. They testified there were no signs of forced entry or immediate struggle. A firearms examiner confirmed the bullets matched the .38 and the trigger worked normally. The forensic pathologist described the three contact gunshot wounds and the lack of defensive injuries, noting the firing distance was extremely close.

Willie Braxton testified he lent the revolver that morning. He repeated what Deshawn told him: “to scare off some people.” Willie also testified that months before, Deshawn asked if the revolver was for sale “in case somebody tried him.”

Roby presented excerpts from Deshawn’s recorded jail calls: Tamika had the lease and utilities in her name; if she left, he’d have nowhere to go; he wasn’t about to let her leave him stuck; people were focusing on the burger instead of the bigger situation.

The defense called no expert witnesses. In cross-examination and closing, Dorsey returned again and again to humiliation, alcohol, and surrender, asking jurors to see it as manslaughter.

Roby’s closing was methodical: prior domestic calls, Tamika’s savings and transfer request, Deshawn’s interest in the revolver, his walk to Willie’s trailer, three close-range shots, and his own recorded statements about dependence on Tamika’s lease and income. “Borrowing a gun,” she told jurors, “walking back, and firing three contact shots shows intent.”

On the third day of trial, after instructions on second-degree murder and manslaughter, the jury deliberated for just under four hours. They returned with a unanimous verdict: guilty of second-degree murder and guilty on the firearm enhancement.

After the verdict, the burger post still floated around the way stories do—reduced, retold, turned into a punchline by people who never stood in that trailer and smelled the stale anger in the walls. But in the court record, it sat where it belonged: not as the cause, but as the moment that exposed the real fear underneath—fear of being laughed at, fear of being left, fear of losing the roof that wasn’t even in his name.

And back in that single-wide, after the tape came down and the evidence markers were gone, the small {US flag} magnet stayed crooked on the refrigerator, a cheap symbol that had nothing to do with pride and everything to do with ordinary life. The kind of ordinary life that people think is safe by default, until they realize safety isn’t a place. It’s a pattern—and patterns can break.