LOCKPORT, La. — A nurse embroiled in a custody fight with his ex-wife attacked his former in-laws, his onetime boss at a hospital that fired him and his current wife in a rampage that spanned two parishes in Louisiana, leaving three dead before killing himself, authorities said.
Three survivors remained hospitalized Friday, said Brennan Matherne, a spokesman for the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, in an e-mail.
Ben Freeman, 38, first attacked his former in-laws Thursday night with a shotgun in Lafourche Parish about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans, wounding parish Councilman Louis Phillip Gouaux and Gouaux’s daughter Andrea. Both were in critical condition Friday, Matherne wrote. Gouaux’s wife, Susan, was dead when deputies arrived.
Freeman was divorced from Gouaux’s daughter Jeanne, whom he married in 1997. Jeanne Gouaux had filed several protective orders against Freeman, who was allowed only supervised visits with their four children, said Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre. The last protective order expired less than a month ago, he said.
About 20 minutes after the first shootings, Freeman arrived at the home of Ochsner St. Anne General Hospital CEO Milton Bourgeois in nearby Raceland, about 8 miles from Lockport.
Bourgeois was shot and killed at close range. His wife, Ann, was shot in the leg, Matherne said. Freeman had worked at the hospital as a registered nurse before he was fired in 2011, Webre said.
Freeman was found dead about 10:45 p.m. Thursday along U.S. 90 near Bayou Blue. He had shot himself in the head.
Officers searching for Freeman found the body of his current wife, Denise Taylor Freeman, in the bathroom of their house, Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter told The Courier.
