Off-duty officer who stopped to save a life loses his own
Michael Louviere, a Lousiana police officer, had just finished his shift when he happened upon what seemed to be a car accident. Still in uniform, Louviere got out to help, and he was shot in the back of the head for his efforts.
Mouviere was on his way home to his wife and kids at 6:30 a.m. when he saw the 2010 Dodge Charger lodged in between a pickup truck and a U-Haul. But when Louviere moved to investigate, he found 31-year-old Simone Veal, who was two months pregnant and bleeding from where she had been shot at least once.
Louviere spoke with the driver of the U-Haul, 32-year-old Sylvester Holt, before turning his attention to Veal in an attempt to administer aid. However, while he was working, Holt came up behind him and shot him in the back of the head before shooting Veal multiple times as well. Louiviere, Veal and her unborn child were all declared dead after the shooting.
“This was a coldblooded murder,” Westwego Police Chief Dwayne Munch said at a news conference Friday. “Officer Louviere was shot in the back of the head; he had no idea what was coming.”
— Off-duty officer fatally shoots man during road rage altercation —
Holt and Veal had been married in 2012 but became estranged. Veal found a new boyfriend and became pregnant with this new man’s child, which apparently enraged Holt to the point of murder. He drove the U-Haul to her home and chased Veal in her car, ramming into her multiple times and shooting at her car from the U-Haul. When they reached an intersection, he rammed the U-Haul into the back of her car, and she crashed into a pickup. Holt then stopped the U-Haul and continued to fire at her, but he had paused in firing when Louviere arrived on the scene.
After killing Veal, Louviere and Veal’s unborn child, Holt hailed a cab but told the driver that he needed to stop because he thought he was going to vomit. He got out of the cab at the twin cantilever bridges that cross the Mississippi River and climbed over the concrete barrier to one of the metal support girders.
He admitted to police who arrived on the scene that he had shot Louviere and Veal, and despite officers’ attempt to coax him back onto the bridge, Veal, who had been jailed before for allegedly raping a woman, decided he did not want to go back to jail and took out his gun to shoot himself in the chest.
New Orleans EMS Deputy Chief Cedric Palmisano rappelled down to Holt, who was still alive, and although Holt was taken to the hospital, he died that night.
