Louisiana news briefs

Daughter, boyfriend accused in bludgeoning death of mom
GRETNA (AP) — The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office says a 34-year-old woman from Terrytown and her 26-year-old boyfriend have been arrested in Virginia and are accused of killing the woman’s mother in Louisiana.
Col. John Fortunato said Thursday that sheriff’s deputies are working to extradite Misty Eiermann and Bryan Anthony Schwartz from Richmond, where federal marshals arrested them a train station on Tuesday as fugitives. He says warrants accuse each of second-degree murder.
Both are in the Richmond City Jail. It was not clear whether they have attorneys.
Fortunato says that after Mary Romano’s bludgeoned body was found Sept. 10 in her house, they gave conflicting statements about their whereabouts.
He says sheriff’s detectives interviewed both in Richmond, and Eiermann allegedly said she hit her mother with a flashlight during an argument.

Amelia Belle’s revenue down
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Shreveport-Bossier casino market was Louisiana’s biggest winner in August: the $71.2 million take at its riverboats and racetrack slots casino was up 6.4 percent from a year earlier.
Figures released Thursday by Louisiana State Police show statewide gambling revenues rose 1.2 percent to $217.8 million.
The biggest loser was Opelousas. The slots casino at Evangeline Downs fell 4.4 percent from August 2013, to $7.5 million.
The Baton Rouge and Lake Charles markets were about even. Riverboat winnings in Baton rouge rose 0.4 percent to $24.4 million, while the riverboat and track casino in Lake Charles were down 0.1 percent to $61.7 million.
In Morgan City, the Amelia Belle’s take was down 3.3 percent, to $4.4 million. The New Orleans market was down 2.4 percent to $48.5 million.

McAllister chief of staff booked with DWI
MONROE — (AP) U.S. Rep. Vance McAllister says his chief of staff is on temporary leave after being booked with drunken driving.
The Swartz Republican says Adam Terry told him Saturday that he’d been arrested Friday in Richland Parish.
Terry declined to comment. Terry’s bond is $2,000.
McAllister says that if Terry gets help and does what courts require, “he will be given a second chance in my office.”
The arrest affidavit says Trooper Nicholas Gee stopped a vehicle that crossed the side and center lines of U.S. 425 near Rayville at 11:05 p.m. Sept. 12. Gee said Terry smelled of alcohol, did poorly on a sobriety test, refused to take a breath test and was booked with DWI and improper lane usage.

La. delegation: How
will VA fix mistakes?
All eight members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation say the Department of Veterans Affairs is hurting the credit of hundreds of Louisiana veterans by failing to pay on time for emergency health care at private facilities.
A letter sent Thursday to Secretary Robert McDonald asks how the VA plans to correct its mistakes in Louisiana and make sure they never happen again.
According to the letter, leaders of the Veterans Integrated Service Network covering Louisiana have said at public meetings that they incorrectly rejected claims from hundreds of veterans.
The letter was released by U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany. In July, he and Sen. Mary Landrieu introduced a bill that would require the secretary to report on each service network’s record in paying emergency medical claims on time.

Washington woman arrested for shooting her parents
WASHINGTON (AP) — A 27 year-old Washington area woman has been booked with two counts of attempted first-degree murder after her parents were shot.
St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz said Jamie Kristen Fontenot’s 59-year-old father and 58-year-old mother were taken to a nearby hospital following Wednesday night’s shooting.
The sheriff says Fontenot’s father had undergone surgery for one gunshot to his chest. He’s listed in critical condition.
Her mother, who had been shot twice, was treated and released.
Guidroz says deputies found Fontenot calmly sitting on the front porch with a loaded and cocked handgun.
Capt. Megan Vizena says Fontenot’s motive remains unclear and the investigation continues.

Baton Rouge man sentenced to 5 years in prison
BATON ROUGE (AP) — A Baton Rouge man who conned people out of more than $800,000 over a four-year period to fund his gambling habit by telling them he was a hot sauce heir with a $20 million trust fund has been sentenced to more than five years in prison.
On Thursday, Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson also ordered 34-year-old Johnathan E. Williams to pay more than $835,000 in restitution and forfeit another $500,000 as illegal proceeds of his fraud scheme.
Jackson, who sentenced Williams to 63 months in prison, immediately remanded him into federal custody after finding he had continued to engage in criminal conduct even after his March guilty plea to wire fraud charges.

Grand jury indicts man
BATON ROUGE (AP) — A federal grand jury has indicted a 49-year-old Baton Rouge man, already accused of stealing thousands of dollars from the Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, with trying to steal almost $300,000 from other health care centers.
U.S. Attorney Walt Green says Larry Butler was arrested in Tacoma, Washington, on Monday almost a month after Baton Rouge police issued a warrant for his arrest. He’s accused of charging over $16,000 for personal items using Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center’s credit cards.
Green said Butler had been orchestrating a scheme since July 2013 to defraud hundreds of thousands of dollars from other institutions.
The indictment against Butler includes wire fraud, false representation of a Social Security number and aggravated identity theft.

Cheniere boosting natural gas export plant by $6B
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Cheniere Energy is boosting its investment in its Sabine Pass liquefied natural gas export facility in Cameron Parish by $6 billion to build two production units in addition to the four already under construction.
The company said the two units lift the total project cost to $18 billion. About 120 new direct jobs will be created on top of the 280 already expected from the first four production units, with pay averaging $100,000 per year, plus benefits.
The first of those units are expected to begin production in 2015. The final two units will begin production in 2019.
An estimated 4,500 construction jobs are projected at the peak of building activity.