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Prosecutor: DoorDash driver ‘ambushed’ and ‘slaughtered’ in 2023 killing in Cedar Rapids
His mother testified she heard gunshots over the phone when her son called
Feb. 26, 2025 7:33 pm, Updated: Feb. 27, 2025 7:29 am
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CEDAR RAPIDS — A prosecutor said Wednesday a 21-year-old DoorDash delivery driver was “ambushed, surrounded and slaughtered” as he went to deliver chicken wings Oct. 5, 2023, to an apartment on Cedar Rapids’ northeast quadrant.
“The evidence will show Myron Snyder was taken away in a senseless and completely avoidable act,” Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks said during his opening statement in the trial of Cameron Armad Leonard, 26, of Cedar Rapids, who is charged with first-degree murder and four other charges.
Earlier the night of the killing, Snyder told his mother the deliveries had been steady. He was working one of the three jobs he usually had, Maybanks said.
Snyder delivered the order. The customer, Maurice Brown, and his brother, Cameron Leonard, approached him. Brown and Snyder had a conflict months earlier, and they got into a physical fight, Maybanks said — but that shouldn’t have led to murder, he said.
A jury was selected Wednesday morning. Testimony started and is expected to continue into next week. Besides first-degree murder, Leonard also is charged with intimidation with a dangerous weapon, going armed with intent, use of a dangerous weapon in the commission of a crime and being a person ineligible to carry a dangerous weapon.
Maybanks told the jury that while Snyder and Brown were fighting, Leonard ripped off his shirt and drew his gun, a 9-mm with an extra magazine. After the fight, Snyder ran to his car in an attempt to leave. He was “scared for his life” and called his mother, the prosecutor said.
During the trial, a video will show Snyder got in his car and attempted to back out when Brown took out a gun and shot at the car three times, Maybanks told jurors. Leonard stood by watching with a gun in his hand.
Brown approached the driver’s side and fired again. But Snyder also was armed and shot Brown in self-defense, Maybanks said. The video will show Leonard then shot Snyder from behind the vehicle, he said.
Maybanks said Snyder attempted to escape from the car and shoot at Leonard, who is the only one to survive the altercation. Leonard’s blood was found on Snyder’s car as he “circled around and reloaded his gun,” putting the final bullet in Snyder’s head, Maybanks said. Snyder was shot six times — in the head, chest and back.
Another man, Pierre Morrow — who is Brown’s and Leonard’s stepfather — was at the scene and also is charged in this case. Investigators discovered Morrow took Leonard’s gun from the scene after the shootings.
Bryan Tingle, Leonard’s lawyer, in his opening statement, painted a different picture of the what happened. He asked jurors to look at the facts of the “huge tragedy” because the evidence will show Leonard was “forced” to defend himself and his brother.
Snyder and Brown get into a fist fight and Leonard didn’t know what to do, Tingle said. He had a gun in his hand, which he usually carried, along with an extra magazine, but he didn’t initially use it, Tingle said.
Brown was shot seven times and Leonard was at shot six or seven times. But “he didn’t fire his gun until he had to,” Tingle told jurors
Leonard was defending his brother and himself, the defense attorney said. He circled around the car to get away from gunshots.
Tingle said the jurors, after looking at the evidence, will determine Leonard was justified in the shooting.
Mother heard gunshots
Snyder’s mother, Alicia Rogers, 45, of Cedar Rapids, testified she saw her son at home earlier and he told her he was going to deliver food that night. He kept a gun in the glove box while working at night. He didn’t carry it for his other part-time day jobs — working at the Boys and Girls Club and delivering for FedEx, she said.
Rogers, tearing up throughout her testimony, said her son told her he loved her and she left to run errands with her daughter.
Snyder send her a text and said it was busy night for deliveries. Later, at 8:19 p.m., she received a call from him. He was “panicked and out of breath.”
Her son said he just got into a fight with someone. She asked who it was but Snyder told her he didn’t know. Rogers told him to get in the car and come home.
Rogers said she then heard a car door open and heard a man say, ‘Call your people’ and Snyder say “This is my mom.”
Rogers then heard her son yelling to someone to get out of his car, over and over. She was asking him who it was, but he didn’t respond, she said.
She heard gunshots, maybe five or six. Rogers said she was screaming into the phone, asking her son to respond but he didn’t.
Rogers said her daughter, hearing the conversation, called 911. They put Snyder’s location in an app to pinpoint his location within the apartment complex.
By the time they got there, police were at the scene. Rogers said she had remained on the call with her son until police hung up his phone.
“I didn’t realize it,” Rogers said. “I was in shock.”
Other testimony
Corey Johnson, 37, who lived in the apartment complex, said he was awakened to gunshots. He fell asleep early that night and thought it was “Fourth of July” because of the gunfire. He heard “a lot” of shots coming from the parking lot.
“I hit the floor,” Johnson said.
He looked out his window and saw people shooting at each other. He saw them running around a car, parked near his. He got away from the window until the shooting stopped.
Johnson said he could tell two people were dead and one was injured. He also said another “tall man with a white shirt and dreads” stood there and was saying Leonard’s name. Johnson didn’t know who Leonard was.
Johnson found it “weird” because the man moved his car a few times but never went over to Leonard to help him. Johnson decided to go over to the man and “save his life.” He used his shirt to apply pressure to Leonard’s wounds.
Johnson said the other two men were lying in the parking lot, not far from Leonard. One was by the open car door and the other by the trunk.
Maybanks asked if Johnson saw a gun, but he saw only a small revolver in the middle of all of them. Johnson said he didn’t see a 9 mm gun.
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