2 Louisiana deputies arrested, fired after fatal shooting

Two sheriff ’s deputies in Louisiana have been arrested on a count of manslaughter and fired after police officials said they fatally shot an unarmed man inside a parked vehicle last week.

Sheriff Joseph P. Lopinto III of Jefferson Parish said the officers’ use of force “was not justified” after they shot the man, Daniel Vallee, during a standoff with police early Wednesday in Marrero, Louisiana, just south of New Orleans.

The shooting happened around 2 a.m., when the police, responding to a noise complaint in the area, found Vallee inside a vehicle parked in front of a “known crack house,” the sheriff said during a news conference Monday night.

Officers repeatedly ordered Vallee, 34, to exit the vehicle, but he refused, the sheriff said. During the standoff, which lasted about 12 minutes, Vallee locked the doors and eventually started the vehicle’s engine, according to Lopinto.

“That, of course, escalated the situation,” he said. “Numerous of my deputies drew their weapons at that point in time, expecting him to try to take off.”

During the encounter, Vallee had raised his hands, but at one point dropped them, hitting the vehicle’s horn, Lopinto said.

“My opinion, that horn, whether it scares my deputy or whether my deputy reacts to the shot of the horn, ends up firing his weapon,” the sheriff said. “The second deputy fired his weapons reacting to that gunfire.”

Both officers fired multiple times, Lopinto said. The three other officers on the scene did not fire their weapons.

The sheriff identified the fired officers as Isaac Hughes, 29, and Johnathan Louis, 35. Hughes had been employed with the department since 2013, and Louis since 2020. Each faces one count of manslaughter.

“Unfortunately, the use of force in this situation was not justified,” Lopinto said, adding that he thought the shooting was “certainly not intentional.”

The officers cooperated with an investigation, and body-camera video of the standoff, which has not yet been released, “backed up” what the officers told investigators about the shooting, Lopinto said.

Lopinto said the shooting was the first to be recorded by police body cameras since the Jefferson Parish Sheriff ’s Office starting using them last year. The office adopted the technology after a video showing one of its deputies assaulting a woman attracted national news attention.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana has filed several lawsuits in the past two years against the sheriff ’s office, stemming from what the ACLU says are incidents of violent beatings and racial profiling.

Last week, Glenn McGovern, a civil rights lawyer hired by Vallee’s family, told a New Orleans news station, WWL-TV, that Vallee’s constitutional rights had been violated and questioned why the police did not use other tactics to get him out of the vehicle.

McGovern did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.