BATON ROUGE - The East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney's Office "no-billed" an individual accused of being a principal to murder after a good Samaritan was knocked unconscious outside of a nightclub in May.

Hayes Sellers, 18, was killed as he tried to break up a fight outside a club on Highland Road. Investigators said Sellers stepped in to protect a woman from a drunken aggressor, and his head hit concrete after he was punched. He died at a hospital about a week later.

District Attorney Hillar Moore said his office looked at all the evidence, and decided not to proceed with a criminal prosecution against Jayce Lambert, 21. Arrest records show Lambert was "trying to fight every person he came in contact with." Another man, 20-year-old Edmond Revelle, got out of a car and intervened, allegedly punching Sellers in the face and knocking him unconscious, causing Sellers to hit his head.

"He [Lambert] was arrested as a principal. But when we looked at the evidence and viewed the evidence against what the law is and required, we did not think we had sufficient evidence to prosecute him for that offense," District Attorney Hillar Moore said.

The rejection of charges against Lambert comes as charges were also downgraded against Revelle, who was initially booked with second-degree murder.

"We vetted the case among ourselves with the family. We thought the appropriate charge was manslaughter and not murder, and that's what we filed against him," Moore said.

With jury convictions now having to be unanimous, Moore said his office did not think there was enough evidence to support a conviction against Lambert or a murder charge for Revelle. It's a tough pill to swallow for a family having to deal with even more hard news around the holidays.

"Particularly this time of year, this family is hurting and grieving. For lawyers to become involved in victims' families' lives that have been disrupted and to tell them things they don't want to hear based on law and facts, it's tough for them to hear and accept," Moore said.

Revelle is due back in court in March.