Lawyer: Video shows Few had hands up before marshals opened fire
Update 11:43 a.m.
From the Associated Press: Body camera video footage shows that the driver, Chris Few, had his hands up before marshals opened fire, killing Few's son
Update 10:50 a.m.
Bond has been set for both officers, Lt. Derrick Stafford and Norris Greenhouse Jr., at $1 million each.
Update 9:07 a.m.
Judge Kerry Spruill has approved an motion to recuse the Avoyelles District Attorney Office from the case.
District Attorney Charles Riddle III filed the motion because one of the officers charged, Norris Greenhouse Jr., is the son of one of Riddle's assistant district attorneys.
Riddle said they are already in contact with the district attorney office that will be handling the case.
Update 8:50 a.m.
A hearing for the shooting suspects will be held at the Avoyelles Parish Detention Center with Judge William Bennett at 10:30 a.m. The hearing is closed to the media.
Original story
MARKSVILLE — Norris Greenhouse Jr., one of the Marksville Ward 2 city deputy marshals charged Friday in the death of 6-year-old Jeremy David Mardis, is the son of Norris Greenhouse Sr., an Avoyelles Parish assistant district attorney.
It’s the reason District Attorney Charles Riddle III said that a motion to recuse the office would be filed soon.
“The community needs to know this, that our district attorney’s office and the State Police and our local police department, did not direct ... this investigation because of the relationship of one of the accused who was arrested tonight and one of our assistant district attorneys,” Riddle said Friday night.
Marksville resident: 'It's crooked around here'
On Saturday, the day after Greenhouse Jr. and Lt. Derrick Stafford each were arrested and were charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder, thoughts turned to of Jeremy’s upcoming funeral and burial. Both are scheduled Monday in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Some people on social media have been talking of a caravan from the shooting site to Jeremy’s services in Mississippi on Monday morning.
A memorial of balloons and teddy bears sprung up for the autistic boy, a first-grader at Lafargue Elementary School in Effie, at the site where he died Tuesday night. He was a front-seat passenger in the car of his father, Chris Few, who — for reasons still unclear — was being chased by three marshals.
Lt. Jason Brouillette, Stafford and Greenhouse were in pursuit of Few, while Sgt. Kenneth Parnell was called in as a backup while working for the Marksville Police Department.
When the chase ended at the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and Taensas Street, the officers fired several — some reports say as many as 18 — into the car. Jeremy died at the scene, while Few was shot in the head. He is in serious condition at Rapides Regional Medical Center in Alexandria.
“It was the most disturbing thing I’ve seen,” Col. Mike Edmonson, Louisiana State Police superintendent, said about the video taken from the incident. “I will leave it at that.”
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Marksville officers wear body cameras, and Edmonson said the video investigators viewed was from a body camera.
No charges have been filed against either Brouillette or Parnell, but Edmonson said the investigation was continuing. He said that since the shooting, investigators have conducted “countless” interviews, analyzed the body camera video and audio from a 911 call.
“We know a lot about it. This is a complex case. It’s got a lot of moving parts,” he said. “Nothing’s more important to me than the integrity of this case and that’s why I don’t want to go into details. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.”
Edmonson: Answers in child's shooting death will take time
Marksville Police Chief Elster Smith Jr. told The Town Talk earlier Friday all the officers had been placed on administrative leave. A decision had not been made yet about whether they would be paid during that leave, he said.
On Thursday, he briefly addressed the practice of officers working other law enforcement jobs. Smith said that, before this incident, he had no concerns about his officers working for the marshal’s office. He said some of his officers moonlight for other departments and that, as long as that didn’t interfere with their jobs with his department, it was OK with him.
Both Stafford, 32, and Greenhouse Jr., 23, remain in jail.
Boy shot dead in Marksville marshal pursuit
The officers involved have been the subjects of complaints or lawsuits in recent years, according to Gannett Louisiana research.
Brouillette was named in a federal civil rights lawsuit in July that was filed by an inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. Dontrale Demarko Phillips, an inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, filed the lawsuit a list of Alexandria police officers, including Brouillette, the Rapides Parish District Attorney’s Office and multiple others.
Phillips claimed he was arrested without a warrant or probable cause and charged with three counts of armed robbery, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and illegal use of a weapon. He also claims he was denied his rights after his arrest and during his trial and sought $7 million in damages.
The lawsuit was dismissed in September because he had previously filed multiple lawsuits, including three that were dismissed as frivolous, malicious or because he failed to state a claim for which relief could be granted.
Stafford was indicted by a Rapides Parish grand jury on two counts of aggravated rape in October 2011.
The indictment alleged he raped two different victims, one in September 2004 and the other in February 2011. But, in May 2012, the case was dismissed without prejudice, which meant that the charges could be brought again.
Lafayette-area TV station KATC reported that Stafford is a defendant in five pending civil lawsuits in Avoyelles Parish. Greenhouse Jr. also is named in some of those lawsuits, according to the station.
On Friday, Edmonson urged residents who have information about either Stafford or Greenhouse Jr., or the incident, to contact State Police. He said there would be no more press conferences unless there was breaking news to share.
He also said the community, police department and marshal’s office would need time to heal after the shooting, asking people to come together.
“Justice has been done tonight, but the investigation is far, far from over.”
Also not over is the dispute that’s been simmering over the past several months between the city of Marksville and the city marshal’s office. Mayor John Lemoine, in a letter dated Sept. 1, requested an opinion from the AG’s office about what authority city and Ward 2 Marshal Floyd Voinche Sr. and his deputies had within the city limits.
“We have reason to believe that the Ward 2 Marshal is issuing tickets inside the city limits without consent or approval of the Marksville City Council,” reads Lemoine’s letter. “We understand why the State Police can issue tickets without the approval of the Marksville City Council, but we are asking if the Ward 2 Marshal has the authority to issue tickets within the city limits without the approval of the Marksville City Council?”
“I don’t know why he felt the need to start patrolling in city limits,” Lemoine told The Guardian newspaper of London. “It makes no sense to me.”
Marksville Police Chief Elster Smith Jr. said during a Thursday press conference officials were unsure whether the marshal had jurisdiction to operate within the city limits.
Voinche released his first statement about the incident on Friday, pointing to Louisiana revised statute 13:1881, which deals with the general powers and duties of marshals and deputy marshals.
He called the shooting death of Jeremy David Mardis “tragic,” but insisted Louisiana law allowed his deputy marshals “to write traffic tickets, make arrests and preserve the peace.”
So far, the AG’s office hasn’t replied to Lemoine’s letter.
Voinche’s statement was emailed from his attorney, H. Bradford Calvit, of the Alexandria firm of Provosty, Sadler, DeLaunay, Fiorenza & Sobel.
Both Smith and Voinche have said all four officers are POST-certified (Peace Officer Standards and Training), which includes firearms.
When asked whether he had concerns about how Voinche was operating, Smith didn’t answer. He described his relationship with Voinche as “good,” but said he had not talked to him since the shooting.
Also at the Thursday press conference, Edmonson said no gun had been found in Few’s car. Even with the arrests of Stafford and Greenhouse Jr., it still wasn’t clear why the marshals were pursuing Few.
A woman who identified herself as Few’s fiancee has claimed she saw the incident start. Marksville resident Megan Dixon also denied that Few had a gun when she spoke up during the press conference.
“No, he didn’t have a gun because I’m the reason why this all started,” she said. “And I know what happened.”
Dixon told The Guardian that she and Few “had bickered” at TJ’s Lounge, which is on Spring Bayou Road not far from the shooting scene. She said she left with a friend and Few also left to go pick up his son.
Dixon claims, later, Few pulled up next to her car at a traffic signal and tried to get her to come with him. She refused, she said. As they left the signal, she said she saw two black and white marshal’s cars coming from behind with their lights activated.
Few had had some sort of disagreement with one of the marshals involved in the shooting, Dixon told The Guardian. She did not identify which marshal.
UPDATE: Marksville officer a defendant in civil rights lawsuit