Deven Slade Brooks was supposed to drive one of his grandmothers to a doctor's appointment Jan. 10, 2022, but she couldn't reach him.

Neither could his mother, Candace Blood, later that day. She couldn't reach him early the next day, either, and it wasn't normal for Brooks not to communicate with his family daily.

"I knew something was wrong," Blood said.

She was the first witness in the second-degree murder trial of Jamaria Xavier Randle, which started Wednesday — Randle's 23rd birthday. During his opening statement, Rapides Parish Assistant District Attorney Lea Hall painted Randle as the force behind "a stupid plan" to rob Brooks once she learned he'd inherited a sizable amount of money.

Brooks and Randle met at a strip club where she was dancing and had a relationship for about two months. Hall said he believes the relationship was sexual, but Randle already was married to Terrance Lavalais.

Lavalais was in Shreveport for job training, but he eventually moved back to Pineville to be with Randle.

Hall told jurors Brooks had given money and bought a car for Randle. He said he believed the pair's relationship was good in the beginning, but began to fracture as Randle wanted more from him. He described Brooks as socially awkward and said Randle was his first girlfriend.

"He picked the wrong person to shower with money," Hall said.

He said Lavalais didn't appear to be too troubled when he learned of the relationship. The motivating factor in Brooks' death wasn't jealousy but greed, he said.

Hall told jurors Randle would talk about a plan to get Brooks' money every day and that the initial plan was to force him to hand over his financial information. They turned to another defendant, Tremaine Veal, because he had a gun, he said.

Neither Lavalais nor Veal, Randle's cousin, knew Brooks. Lavalais pleaded guilty Feb. 1 to second-degree murder and could testify against Randle.

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Hall told jurors they would see surveillance video from the North Mall Drive Walmart in Alexandria that shows Randle trying to buy and then stealing braided steel bicycle cables, Gorilla tape and zip ties that were used to bind Brooks in his Ball apartment.

He said body camera video from a Ball Police Department officer who stopped Randle while she drove Brooks' red Honda Accord also would be introduced as evidence. And he said a neighbor saw Brooks, already bound, being taken from his apartment.

Hall said jurors would see behavior from Randle he described as "psychotic" on the body camera video. She told the officer she was driving her boyfriend's car, naming Brooks, and identified passenger Lavalais as her brother.

"It is just completely detached," he said.

The three disagreed about what to do with Brooks after they had bound him, though, Hall said. He said Lavalais was the one who fired the shot that killed Brooks.

His body was found Jan. 11, 2022, at Levee Park in Alexandria, which is on the banks of the Red River. The isolated park is "an excellent place, a very excellent place, to do something you don't want people to see."

He had been shot once in his head, and Hall said the bullet entered his lower left head and exited through his right cheek. His body then was tossed off the bank, down a 15-foot embankment, before landing face down.

But Randle became a person of interest when the Alexandria and Ball police departments put together that she had been driving Brooks' car on the night a kidnapping was reported to Ball. A subsequent search of Randle's Sanders Street home found the traffic ticket he had been issued during the stop, the clothes she was wearing and automated teller receipts that showed an $800 withdrawal and declined withdrawals from Brooks' bank account.

Hall told jurors there was some confusion around the kidnapping report Brooks' neighbor had made. The same officer who issued Randle the traffic ticket earlier that night responded to the kidnapping call. When the neighbor said the victim possibly was female, the officer said he'd seen Randle and that she was OK.

"This sends Ball PD into a nosedive from which they don't recover," Hall said.

Randle's attorney, Chad Guillot, asked jurors to keep an open mind during his opening statement. He told them to remember the discussion they had during jury selection about the credibility of witnesses and to remember the deal Lavalais made with the state.

Although the mandatory sentence for second-degree murder is life in prison without the possibility of parole, probation or suspension, Hall told jurors the law allows Lavalais to get a reduced sentence if he provides substantial assistance to prosecutors.

This article originally appeared on Alexandria Town Talk: Prosecutors say greed the reason for Deven Brooks' kidnapping, death