MARKSVILLE, LA. — The night began with a dispute at a local bar.
Christopher Few and his sometimes girlfriend, Megan Dixon, were playing pool at T.J.’s Lounge. They drank Budweisers chased with shots of tequila. She told others that they were no longer a couple.
After she danced with one of the bartenders, Few became visibly upset, went outside and kicked the door. Dixon left the bar, and the two quarreled in the parking lot. Soon, Few and Dixon raced off in different vehicles, and someone called 911.
Two city marshals — who usually serve arrest warrants — pursued Few’s SUV, cornering it two miles away at the closed entrance to a state park. For reasons that are not clear, the marshals opened fire. At least 18 shots later, Few was critically injured, and his 6-year-old son, Jeremy Mardis, was dead, shot five times in the head and chest.
Jeremy, who was autistic, was the youngest person in the country to be fatally shot by law enforcement officers this year.
This small town in the center of Louisiana is in shock, wondering how the night could have ended so tragically. Most people are blaming the two city marshals, who were arrested Friday night and charged with one count each of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder.
“It’s like they were after Bonnie and Clyde,” Larry Breaux, a retired construction worker who lives in an adjoining town, said at a diner Saturday in Marksville, which is several hours south of where fugitives Bonnie and Clyde were fatally shot by members of a posse in 1934.
Why the two city marshals — Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23 — were chasing Few is unclear. He was not armed and was not the subject of an arrest warrant. Stafford is a Marksville police officer who was moonlighting as a marshal. Greenhouse is a reserve Marksville officer and a deputy marshal in nearby Alexandria.
Mike Edmonson, who heads the Louisiana State Police, ordered the marshals’ arrest after reviewing forensic evidence, a 911 recording, accounts from some of those involved and images from a body camera worn by one of two city police officers who joined the pursuit. The footage “was one of the most disturbing videos I’ve ever seen under these circumstances,” Edmonson said Saturday. “It troubled me as a police officer and as a father. There’s no reason that boy deserved to die like that.”
Court records show Stafford has been sued in civil court on allegations he used a Taser on a handcuffed woman and broke the arm of a 15-year-girl while breaking up a school bus fight. Both men have been accused of inappropriately using pepper spray while breaking up a fight. Court dockets show Stafford was indicted on two counts of aggravated rape, but it is unclear how those charges were resolved.
