Coast man was 19 and on meth when he shot a woman he didn’t know, he said in guilty plea
After pleading guilty to first degree murder this week, 22-year-old Dannie Bergeron Jr. was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.
The trial for Bergeron was scheduled to begin Tuesday. The jurors were summoned and were present when Bergeron changed his plea from not guilty to guilty, District Attorney Joel Smith announced Friday.
During his plea, Bergeron admitted to shooting the victim but said he did not remember very many details of the murder because of his methamphetamine use. He also apologized to the victim’s family.
Circuit Judge Lawrence Bourgeois sentenced him to life in jail.
Smith called it “a senseless and brutal crime that stems from the use of illegal drugs.”
On April 7, 2018, Harrison County deputies arrived on the scene of a shooting at a home on Mills Road, off Mississippi 52, They found Tiffany Goodman, 27, in the garage of the house dead from a single gunshot wound to the right side of her head.
She originally was from Wiggins, and her Facebook page said she was living in Biloxi.
The homeowner’s son said he witnessed the murder and identified Bergeron, then 19, as the shooter.
Bergeron phoned the sheriff’s office and said he was in California, but police say he later admitted he was at his father’s house in Washington Parish, Louisiana.
Deputies in Louisiana arrested him there and recovered a 0.40 caliber handgun that later was determined through ballistic testing to be the murder weapon.
“Deputies from Harrison County immediately responded to Louisiana and interviewed the defendant and the friend who was with him,” said Assistant District Attorney Matthew Burrell, who prosecuted the case along with Chief ADA Crosby Parker.
“Both individuals told deputies they had been using methamphetamine in the days leading up the murder. The defendant went on to tell the deputies he had never met with the victim, but he believed the victim deserved to be killed,” Burrell said.
