Early on the evening of the longest day of 2021 — still light at 7:30 — all hell broke loose in front of a candy store in the Greater Ville neighborhood of north St. Louis. Three men were killed and three wounded.

“It was a chaotic scene, to say the least,” testified homicide Detective Scott Paiva when the case — or part of it — made it to court this week. Dianthony Lake, who was wounded on that June night, was on trial for the murder of Kevin Page.

Early in the investigation, Lake had made a videotaped statement to Paiva. He told the detective he had gone to the store with a friend and was there when the shooting started. He said he did not have a weapon. That turned out to be only partially true. Lake did not have a weapon when he arrived, but in a tussle that preceded the shootout, he grabbed a gun from Page’s waistband.

Unbeknownst to Lake, there were several cameras in the vicinity, and Paiva had already viewed the tapes. They clearly showed Lake with a gun. When confronted with this fact, Lake changed his story and said he had picked up a gun during the fight, but it was unloaded so he had not shot anybody. That’s not what the cameras say, said Paiva, and Lake changed his story again. He only shot at a couple of people and it was in self-defense.

He was charged with murder.

Despite the existence of the tapes, much about the shootout remains unclear. There were two groups of men. Or were there three? Some had their faces covered. Who were these men? They weren’t all youngsters. Page was 40, and fellow homicide victims O.J. Pernell and Charlie Anderson were 44 and 31. Lake was 29. Old to be gang-bangers, right?

The case against Lake went nowhere during Kim Gardner’s tenure as circuit attorney but was aggressively pushed along by the new boss, Gabriel Gore, who has been trying to clear a huge backlog. He has filled a depleted staff with veteran prosecutors who signed on for the Great Mission of restoring the city’s criminal justice system. The most veteran of these veterans is Gordon Ankney. He was Missouri Prosecutor of the Year in 1982. He went on to have a fine career as a civil litigator, but he last prosecuted a criminal case in 1985.

This was before cameras, before widespread use of DNA. When prosecutors of that era used to make their pitches to juries, they’d often admit to an imperfect case. “I wish my witnesses were of higher character. I wish I could show you a movie of exactly what happened. But criminals don’t associate with good people, and there are no such movies.”

Now there often are.

Ankney was assigned the Lake case. His second chair was Grant Simon, a young prosecutor who started with Gardner, resigned and has come back.

It is fortunate for the state that it is not required to supply a motive. Who did what matters. Why does not. So motive was not supplied. One of the victim’s relatives who was not a witness and did not want to be identified in the newspaper said the dispute had to do with ownership of the candy store and that involved a woman, and it seemed to me — and must have seemed to the prosecution — that motive would only muddy the waters. The key pieces of evidence were the videotape of Lake’s untruthul statements to the detective and the surveillance tapes that seemed to show the defendant rushing toward the victim and pointing a gun at him in a way that fit exactly with the entry and exit wounds of which the medical examiner had testified.

Public defender Josh Lohn, who was assisted by Alexa Hillery, looked at those same surveillance tapes and saw something else entirely. First of all, Lohn saw a man who at the first sense of trouble — just seconds before things went crazy — carried one little girl and guided another into the relative safety of the candy store. “His priority was saving life that day.”

But that came in closing argument.

First came the defense case. Lake testified. Usually, the defense doesn’t want to expose their guy to cross-examination, but the jury had already seen Lake lie to the detective. How could he hurt himself further? He told the jury he shot at some guys who shot at him, and when he noticed his friend, Anderson, fighting with Page, he rushed over to help. Page wrestled Anderson’s gun away, and aimed it at Lake, said Lake. Only then did he fire.

In cross, Ankney pointed out that the tapes seemed at odds with much of Lake’s story. “You were lying as fast as you can talk,” he said. “No sir,” said Lake.

Then Ankney gave the first closing argument he has given in 38 years. He used notes. He did not shoot for flamboyance. He reminded the jury of Medical Examiner Kanayo Tatsumi’s testimony that Page had been flat on his back when he was shot in the chest. Ankney stopped the tape at a point in which Lake stood over Page and pointed the gun down at him. There was no audio.

Lohn was much more dramatic. He spoke slowly, as if he were thinking aloud. It is easy, he said, to understand why Lake would get confused when talking to the detective. Not only was he scared to be talking to the police, but things had happened so fast. Anderson was killed. Page was killed. Lake himself was shot. How would anybody remember events precisely?

As Ankney had done, Lohn walked the jury through the surveillance tapes. He showed the moment when Lake, gun in hand, rushed toward Page and Anderson.

“In the haze of gunfire, bullets flying indiscriminately, smell of gunpowder still in the air, Mr. Lake chose to run to the aid of his friend.” A meaningful pause. “Greater love hath no man.”

I suspect the words read more overwrought than they sounded in the courtroom. Lake did rush to the aid of a friend. Also, under current Missouri law, self-defense can be interpreted broadly. If the state doesn’t encourage its citizens to shoot each other, it doesn’t push too hard against the idea. Did Lake think he was in danger? I mean, there was a shootout. Maybe this case wasn’t the slam-dunk it appeared to me.

I was sitting close to the jurors, but they were impossible to read. I wondered what Lake was thinking. Lohn made it sound like he deserved a Bronze Star. Did he believe that?

The victim’s small entourage did not. In the hallway afterward, they said they thought the case had gone pretty well. They thought the surveillance tapes were clear.

Ankney told them he did not expect a quick verdict. There is a lot of evidence to consider, he said. He shrugged.

The following day, the jury convicted Lake of voluntary manslaughter, armed criminal action and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Even in this era of ubiquitous cameras, you never know.