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Hotline set up for information on pair charged in road-rage killing of Aiden Leos, 6

A man at a lectern covered with media microphones speaks and holds up a picture of a child.
Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer, shown at a June 6 news conference in Santa Ana holding a photo of Aiden Leos, is asking for the public’s help.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
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Orange County’s district attorney, in an effort to gather information on additional possible road rage incidents involving a Costa Mesa pair accused in the fatal freeway shooting last month of 6-year-old Aiden Leos, has set up a hotline and is asking for the public’s help.

Authorities believe that, between December 2020 and June 2021, there may have been other firearm-brandishing incidents beyond the one that prosecutors say led to Aiden’s death. The district attorney’s office is asking anyone with information on such incidents involving Marcus Eriz, 24, and girlfriend Wynne Lee, 23, to call its tips line at at (714) 834-7000 or to email [email protected].

Eriz and Lee, who were arrested June 6, are charged in the May 21 killing of Aiden on the 55 Freeway. The young boy was in the back seat of his mother’s car as she was driving him to his Yorba Linda school when he was shot to death.

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Eriz told police that he reacted angrily to being “flipped off” by the boy’s mother, Joanna Cloonan, according to the court documents. He grabbed his loaded Glock 17 9-millimeter pistol, readied it, then rolled down the passenger window and shot at Cloonan’s car.

Eriz shot the boy from the passenger seat of a white Volkswagen Golf SportWagen driven by Lee, authorities said. He is charged with one felony count of murder, one felony count of shooting into an occupied vehicle and two felony enhancements that could lead to a 40-year sentence if he’s convicted on all counts.

Eriz, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, had his $2-million bail revoked by Superior Court Judge Larry Yellin during a hearing Friday. “There is a substantial likelihood of a threat to the public if Mr. Eriz was to get out,” the judge said.

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Lee has been charged with one felony count of accessory after the fact and one misdemeanor, which carries a possibility of three years in a state prison and one year in an Orange County jail.

She has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Her bail was set at $500,000.

Authorities allege that a few days after the shooting the couple was involved in another road rage incident. Similarly, Eriz allegedly brandished a firearm at a Tesla driver near the 91 Freeway in Corona while riding in the same Volkswagen with Lee behind the wheel.

Times Community News staff writer Lilly Nguyen and Times staff writer Faith E. Pinho contributed to this report.

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