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Jake Couture, 17, was shot in the back and killed and two other people were wounded in the parking lot of the gated Brittany Bay Apartments in Naples on New Year's Day 2010, the Collier County Sheriff's Office said.

The shooting happened at the complex on Triangle Bay Drive. Brandon Standifer, 21, was hit in the chest and Michael Fleitas, 15, was hit in the buttocks. Both survived. Deputies were called about 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 1, and the first public account described a dispute between people at an apartment and "a person or persons" inside a white pickup truck. Investigators later concluded one man had fired.

That man was James Matthew Menard, 23, of Golden Gate Estates, who was arrested Jan. 5 and charged with second-degree murder and two counts of attempted second-degree murder. According to the trial record summarized in a later federal court ruling, Menard got into the gated complex by driving through the exit gate as another vehicle left.

Witnesses said the argument began after a white Mercedes pulled into the lot carrying Couture, Fleitas, Standifer and a fourth man, Brandon Morales. Several witnesses testified that Standifer took off his shirt and shoved Menard hard enough that he stumbled. Morales was nearby holding what more than one witness took for an Uzi, but court records show it was a replica that fired BB pellets and that the orange markings identifying such guns as toys had been removed.

Menard pulled a handgun from his pocket and fired a series of shots as he moved toward his pickup, according to the same record. One round hit Standifer in the chest, one hit Fleitas and one struck Couture in the back.

A judge rejected Menard's bid for immunity under Florida's stand your ground law before trial, finding he had no legal right to be inside the complex and that "the only force used against him was a push." Menard testified he fired because he feared for his life. Jurors convicted him on Jan. 14, 2011, of third-degree felony murder in Couture's death, aggravated battery for wounding Fleitas and armed trespass, and acquitted him of attempted second-degree murder of Standifer.

He was sentenced Feb. 11, 2011, to life in prison on the murder count, consecutive to 30 years with a 25-year mandatory minimum for the battery. Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld the convictions in 2013, and a federal judge denied his habeas petition in May 2020. State prison records list him as still serving the life term. Couture, a Gulf Coast High School student, was buried after services at First Baptist Church of Naples on Jan. 5, 2010, the same day Menard was arrested.