The suspect Ben Edward Freeman, 38, was also believed to have
shot three other people in the crime spree that took place on
Thursday night in Lafourche Parish, about 45 miles southwest of
New Orleans.
"Freeman was connected to each of the victims," Lafourche Parish
Sheriff Craig Webre said in a statement.
In the first incident, Freeman is suspected of shooting
Lafourche Parish Councilman Louis Phillip Gouaux, his former
father-in-law; Susan Gouaux, his former mother-in-law; and their
daughter Andrea.
Susan Gouaux died in the shotgun shooting and the other two were
in critical condition at an area hospital.
"Ben Freeman is a former son-in-law of the Gouauxs, having been
formerly married to their daughter, Jeanne Gouaux," the
sheriff's office said, adding that Freeman was in a bitter
custody dispute over their four children.
Freeman was arrested for harassment in May 2013 and had been
served with at least two protective orders, the most recent of
which expired in November 2013, the office said.
About 20 minutes after the first shooting, Freeman was suspected
of going to the home of hospital chief executive Milton
Bourgeois and opening fire. Freeman had once been an employee of
the hospital where Bourgeois worked and was sacked in 2011, the
sheriff's office said.
Bourgeois was shot at close range and died. His wife was shot in
the leg and was recovering after surgery.
Freeman's body was found later that night in a car along the
side of a road with a shotgun wound to the head. No suicide note
was found.
The body of his wife, Denise Taylor Freeman, was found at the
home the couple shared, and it appears she was strangled and
drowned, the sheriff's office said.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; editing by Kevin Gray, Jim Marshall and Vicki Allen)
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