Teen who killed Tacoma business owner in New Orleans sentenced. Judge apologizes
The 17-year-old boy who pleaded guilty to the fatal New Orleans shooting of Jacob Carter, a co-founder of the Tacoma business Howdy Bagel, was sentenced Monday to 26 years in prison.
Instead of speaking for himself, the defendant, Malik D. Cornelius, had his attorney address the court and the scores of friends and family members of Carter who gathered in a New Orleans courtroom and on Zoom video to watch the hearing Monday afternoon.
Defense attorney Michael Kennedy said Carter was not the usual victim in cases he’s seen in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, and Cornelius was not the usual defendant at his young age. He said as much as he wanted to speak about the young man he had come to know, the only thing they actually needed to say was that they are sorry.
Before handing down Cornelius’ sentence, Judge Camille Buras offered her own apology to Carter’s friends and family.
“On behalf of the city, we are sorry for what happened in this city to your loved ones,” Buras said.
Cornelius pleaded guilty to manslaughter May 9 in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court for the homicide.
The judge called the crime a “cold, calculated murder” that could have been a double homicide. Others testified Monday that Cornelius’ gun jammed during his attempted robbery of Carter and his husband, Daniel Blagovich, and if not for that Blagovich would have been shot, too.
The Jan. 5, 2024 shooting occurred while the couple was on vacation. The night before the two were going to fly home to Tacoma, they were attacked near the intersection of Bourbon and Kerlerec streets. Buras questioned whether it was a hate crime or whether Cornelius and his accomplices just targeted two unarmed men walking down the street. No one else has been charged in the killing.
Nothing was stolen during the robbery except Carter’s life.
Blagovich, who gave a victim-impact statement via Zoom video, said the past 500 days had been the darkest of his life. He told Cornelius that he had stolen the love of his life and killed a man who he had only ever seen bring beauty, light and joy into the world.
“As I held him and watched the life leave his body on that dark concrete corner, my world was forever changed,” Blagovich said. “I realized the world is a much more terrible place than I ever could have imagined.”
Blagovich told Cornelius the one thing they had in common was that both of their lives would be forever changed because of what he had done. He said he had “so much” hatred in his heart for what Cornelius had done, but Carter taught him that only love changes anyone.
“Malik, your life is just getting started,” Blagovich said. “It’s not my desire for you to rot in jail. It’s not my desire for you to feel pain. As we both learn to find hope again, my biggest prayer for you is that at some point in your long life you experience love.”
Blagovich said he met Carter in 2019 when they crossed paths hiking in the Cascade mountains. He said he had an immediate desire to be closer to him and to know him. The two fell in love that summer, and later, Blagovich said, Carter proposed to him. Together, he said, they built a home, a bakery and a business, and they spent every day by each other’s side.
“I looked at him with so much admiration for who he was,” Blagovich said. “I felt so safe and lucky calling this man my own.”
Six more of Carter’s family members addressed the court during the Monday afternoon hearing, including his aunt, three of his brothers, a sister and his father. More than 100 people watched on Zoom.
Their testimonies touched on the pain and grief Carter’s death had caused and the good Carter had done in life. He embarked on mission trips to Zambia and Indonesia, siblings said, at one point taught English to children in China, spent time as a community development worker in the Middle East and later helped resettle refugees in the Pacific Northwest.
His father, James Carter, said his son always seemed to have his eye on someday having his own restaurant. Several relatives spoke of Carter’s talent for making beautiful things, whether it be meals or photographs, and the magnetic warmth he exuded to all who crossed his path.
“He was full of love and light, and he lived to serve others,” Carter’s younger brother, Jonathan Isaac Carter, said.
They also spoke of the rage they felt over what happened. Carter’s sister, Anna, urged Cornelius to look at her while she described how he had approached her brother with nothing but evil intent and shot him “point blank in the heart.” She said Cornelius deserved life behind bars.
Several said they forgave Cornelius and that they knew Carter had forgiven him, too. Another of Carter’s brothers, Joe, said he hoped one day Cornelius would help others the way his brother had helped the world.
The City of New Orleans’ ‘failures’
Carter’s younger brother, Jonathan Isaac Carter, used some of his testimony to decry the “systematic failures” that he said allowed Cornelius to cross paths with Carter and implicated others in his death.
Several months after the shooting, Jonathan Isaac Carter said he learned “infuriating” details about Cornelius, including that he was supposed to be under electronic home monitoring by the New Orleans juvenile court at the time his brother was killed.
The monitoring was a consequence of Cornelius having been arrested for gun and drug charges, Jonathan Isaac Carter said. He said the District Attorney’s Office refused to accept the charges against Cornelius, which made it more likely that the teen would be placed on supervised release rather than be held in detention.
The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment Monday.
The defendant was 16 at the time of the shooting, and he was arrested about a week later on unrelated charges in Jefferson Parish. Days earlier detectives pulled a stolen Kia out of Bayou St. John believed to be connected to the homicide. NOLA.com reported that, according to police, Cornelius allegedly helped others sink the vehicle and then the group stole another car to get away.
A grand jury indicted Cornelius on the charge of second-degree murder, and his case was later transferred to adult court.
Jonathan Isaac Carter said a juvenile court judge also failed to renew a contract with RePath, an application that offers monitoring services for individuals in the criminal-justice system, leaving Cornelius unsupervised when he shot Jacob Carter.
He said city officials including Mayor LaToya Cantrell, Criminal Justice Commissioner Tenisha Stevens and New Orleans City Council failed to set up real-time monitoring of juveniles on supervised release. Given the nuances, Jonathan Isaac Carter said, he was mostly filled with pity for the defendant. He said Cornelius’ mother also failed to shape him into a decent human being.
“He was failed by his mom, he was failed by multiple Orleans Parish juvenile court judges, failed by local city leaders,” Jonathan Isaac Carter said. “He was failed by the City of New Orleans itself.”
Cornelius’ defense attorney agreed with Jonathan Isaac Carter later in the hearing.
“You’re right about the failures of the city. You are absolutely right on everything you said,” Kennedy said.
When the judge apologized for what had happened at the end of the sentencing, Buras said it was her opinion that the case epitomized people’s reactions to the juvenile-justice system and the “cloak of anonymity” it gives to juvenile court.
“Yet the public is the one that suffers the consequences of failures to address juvenile behavior that belongs in adult criminal district court,” Buras said.
This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 1:29 PM.
