A few hours before someone gunned down Justin Hendricks Jr. and burned his Old Jefferson home to the ground, the 34-year-old called 911 to tell authorities about a man who had just beaten a woman bloody inside his house. Hendricks’ nervous voice echoed through a Jefferson Parish courtroom Thursday afternoon – almost five years after his death – in a 911 recording played for the jury that must decide whether the man he reported later murdered him.
“I couldn’t do anything about it because he was waving a gun in my face and beating his girlfriend with a gun,” Hendricks said in the 2011 call about defendant Jacoby Maize, 38. Though he wanted to make authorities aware that Maize was dangerous, Hendricks’ didn’t want it known that he had contacted the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.
“If he finds out I made this call …,” Hendricks said anxiously before he was cut off by the operator.
Jefferson Parish prosecutors allege that within two hours of that 1:28 a.m. call, Maize returned to Hendricks’ Maine Street home on April 25, 2011, and fatally shot him. Prosecutors say Maize came back that night and torched the house to cover up the crime.
In addition to the 911 call, the jury heard testimony Thursday (March 3) from Cecilia Cruz, 27, Maize’s wife and the woman Hendricks witnessed being beaten. Though she admits lying to detectives when questioned five years ago, Cruz implicated Maize in Hendricks’ death on the witness stand.
“Because Jacoby was already in jail, he wasn’t going to be able to hurt me from where he was at. I felt like Jacoby has done this, and I was like, I want justice for Justin,” she said. “I came to my senses. I can’t let this man’s family suffer and wonder what happened.”