By Laura Maggi and Walt Philbin, Staff Writers
Times-Picayune
One law-enforcement officer was killed and four other police wounded in three police shootings in New Orleans and two southeastern Louisiana parishes between Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, police said.
Two civilians, suspects in two of the shootings, were also killed.
In the New Orleans incident, 15-year-old Terrence A. Harold, who lived not far from the shooting scene, an officer said, was shot to death in an exchange of gunfire with a police officer he wounded, police said.
Officer Kevin Boswell, 27, was in good condition Tuesday at the Charity Hospital Trauma Unit at the Elmwood Medical Center. He had a bullet wound to the left ankle and a through-and-through bullet wound to the left forearm, police said.
Police said Harold fired a .25-caliber semi-automatic pistol seven times at Boswell, who had confronted him in a backyard shed in the 2000 block of Touro Street after a brief chase Monday shortly before 7 p.m.
Though Boswell was hit twice, he fired “10 or 11 times” at Harold with his .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol, striking him approximately nine times, said Dr. Frank Minyard, New Orleans coroner.
Minyard said Harold had wounds in the back, chest, two to the shoulder, the back of the thigh, a graze wound to the back of the head, right arm, and back of the right calf, and one other wound. Minyard said the fatal bullet entered through the lower part of the middle of the back at the level of the lower chest and traveled upward through the heart and aorta. “That’s the one that went upward through the heart and killed him,” Minyard said.
Officers said the gun battle followed a foot chase after the youth ran when Boswell and his partner, in plainclothes and an unmarked car, spotted him standing near the corner of Frenchmen and North Johnson streets. The 7th Ward neighborhood in an area of high drug activity and mostly abandoned houses, police said. Boswell initially ran past the youth, then heard a noise in a back yard shed in the 2000 block of Touro Street, and turned to confront the youth, who opened fire, police said.
The other officer, who had tried to cut off the suspect’s escape, heard the gunfire and ran to his partner’s assistance but didn’t get there until the shooting had ended, police said.
In Franklinton on Monday afternoon, a sheriff’s deputy and her estranged husband died in a bloody exchange of gunfire that also wounded another deputy from the Washington Parish sheriff’s office.
Yvonne Deshotel, 45, and Jacob Walker, 24, both transport officers who drive prisoners from jail to court and other locations, had gone to the Liberty Inn Motel in Franklinton to exchange police cars for the next day’s shift, said Capt. Fred Kirby, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office. Kirby did not provide the name of the officers or other victim, which were released Tuesday by the Franklinton Police Department.
Deshotel, who had separated from her husband a month and a half ago and was living at the motel, was talking to Walker in her room, with the door open, when her husband walked in carrying an assault rifle, said Franklinton Police Chief Donald Folse.
She tried to convince Marc Deshotel to leave, but instead he opened fire in a barrage that left holes in the walls, ceilings and windows, Folse said.
Although wounded six times by the gunshots, Walker was able to exchange fire and kill Marc Deshotel, Kirby said. Walker was taken to the Charity Hospital Trauma Unit, where he was listed in serious condition, he said.
Yvonne Deshotel was originally from the Slidell-Bush area, moving to Washington Parish after Hurricane Katrina, Folse said.
Two deputies were shot in Lafourche Parish as they attempted to arrest a man stopped in a stolen truck on Tuesday morning, and two suspects were arrested later in the day.
Robert Alan Power, 18, of Martinez, Ga., and Daniel Stewart Rhodes, 22, of Harlen, Ga., seemed to have gotten lost in the Thibodaux area, said Larry Weidel, Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office spokesman. “They didn’t know where they were,” he said.
They spent Monday night in a white truck they had stolen in Georgia, sleeping outside a convenience store just south of Thibodaux, he said.
Around 6:30 a.m., Rhodes jumped into a blue pickup that had pulled up to the store for gasoline, and took off. Within a few minutes, Deputies Roland Guillot, 44, and Bridget Rupe, 23, who were on patrol, spotted the stolen vehicle and pulled it over to the side of the road, Weidel said.
Rhodes got out of the truck at the officers’ order and Guillot attempted to handcuff him, when Power drove by in the truck stolen earlier. Power fired a 20-gauge shotgun, hitting Guillot in the back of his body armor and just below the vest. Rupe was hit in the left arm.
Both officers returned fire, but Rhodes was able to break free, jumping into Power’s truck. They took off to a wooded area off Louisiana 1, driving on a gravel road between Raceland and Thibodaux, Weidel said. The two men abandoned the truck and ran into to the woods.
Police units from the Sheriff’s Office and neighboring jurisdictions, along with a Louisiana State Police helicopter, cordoned off a three-mile area to search for Power and Rhodes. They eventually found the men, arresting them about 10 a.m. “without incident,” Weidel said.
The injured officers were taken to Thibodaux Regional Hospital, he said. Although Rupe had surgery on her arm, neither have life-threatening wounds.
Rupe had only been out of a law-enforcement training academy for about a month, Weidel said.
Both suspects were to be booked with attempted first-degree murder of a police officer, Weidel said.
Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company