Louisiana news briefs

Man gets 24 years for sexually exploiting children
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A 43-year-old Raceland man has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for sexually exploiting children and possessing child pornography.
U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans says Johnny Smith pleaded guilty Wednesday to the sexual exploitation of children and possession of images depicting the sexual victimization of children under age 12.
U.S. District Judge Sarah S. Vance also sentenced Smith to a lifetime of supervised release and ordered him to register as a sex offender.
Prosecutors say FBI agents found videos Smith recorded in which he engaged in sexually explicit conduct with a 3-year-old girl.
Agents also found about seven videos of 17 images depicting children under age 12 engaged in sexually explicit conduct that Smith downloaded and saved to his computer.

Father runs over toddler daughter
KENNER (AP) — A 14-month-old girl is dead after her father accidentally rolled over her with his truck in the family’s driveway.
Kenner Police Sgt. Brian McGregor says police began receiving 911 calls around 8:55 a.m. Wednesday, reporting that a child had been hit by a vehicle.
McGregor says the mother and father were outside their home, but had left the front door open while they worked on a GPS device. He says the toddler crawled outside and under the vehicle undetected. As the man began to pull out of his driveway, McGregor says he ran over her.
The child was taken to University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
No criminal charges will be filed. McGregor says the case, however, will be forwarded to the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s office for review.

Vintage plane wrecks at Baton Rouge airport
BATON ROUGE (AP) — No one was hurt when a WWII-era plane wrecked on the runway at the Baton Rouge Regional Airport.
Airport spokesman Jim Caldwell said the plane “nosed over” on the runway Wednesday when it was landing, flipping onto its front.
Caldwell said just one person, the pilot, was on board at the time and was not hurt. He said traffic at the airport was not affected by the incident.
Vintage aircraft enthusiasts on hand when the plane wrecked said the German fighter was worth an estimated $2 million.

LSU boasts most diverse student body ever
BATON ROUGE (AP) — LSU officials say the freshman class this fall has the highest average ACT score and highest average grade point average in the university’s history.
The student body, as a whole, is also LSU’s most diverse ever — with 5.3 percent of its more than 30,000 students identifying as Hispanic, 11.2 percent as African-American, 3.5 percent as Asian and 2.2 percent as two or more races.
President and Chancellor F. King Alexander said it presents a clear shift from the history of LSU — the state’s largest public university
LSU traditionally has been whiter than Louisiana as a whole. The university’s first black undergraduate enrolled in 1953, but it was another decade before the first group of black students enrolled on the undergraduate level.

Murder conviction
overturned
LAFAYETTE (AP) — An appeals court has overturned the second-degree murder conviction of a Vermilion Parish man who shot his hunting partner
The court ruled Wednesday that evidence the two men had argued in the past was not enough to prove the killing was intentional.
The state 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal instead handed down a judgment of negligent homicide against Quint Mire in the 2011 shooting death of Julian Gajan and sent the case back to the district court for resentencing.
Mire, who admitted taking crystal methamphetamine, claimed he mistook Gajan for a deer.
Mire now faces up to five years in prison on the negligent homicide charge, rather than the life sentence he had received in the case.

State pay increasing for 40,000 workers
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Some 40,000 classified Civil Service employees will see an increase in their paychecks this month — some for the first time in years.
Funding for the 4 percent boost is included in the Jindal administration’s budget that went into effect July 1.
The raise comes as the administration is preparing to implement state health insurance program changes which include increased out-of-pocket expenses for many of the same employees.
The state budget included more than $60 million to cover the cost of the so-called “performance adjustments.”

2 killed in Terrebonne Parish accident
GIBSON (AP) — State police say two men died in a single vehicle crash in Terrebonne Parish.
Master Trooper Greg Marchand says a car ran off La. 182 near Gibson, struck a tree and overturned into Bayou Black partially submerging the vehicle.
Marchand says 23-year-old Jerome Evans and 31-year-old Dontrell Boykin, both of Gray, died at the scene Wednesday morning.
Marchand says Evans and Boykin were not wearing their seatbelts.
He said investigators are not sure who was driving the car.
The crash remains under investigation.

Community colleges plan OK’d
BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana’s community and technical colleges are embarking on an aggressive, six-year plan.
It includes doubling the number of graduates and their total earnings, quadrupling the number of students they send to the state’s four-year schools and significantly increasing private dollars and partnerships with businesses.
Louisiana Community and Technical College System President Monty Sullivan said the six-part plan, which the system has set out to meet by the year 2020, would have the state’s community and technical college system graduating 40,000 students a year and the annual earnings of its graduating class at $1.5 billion.

Couple arrested in 40 camp burglaries
HOUMA (AP) — Terrebonne Parish authorities say a man and woman are accused of stealing more than $40,000 worth of items from 40 camps in Chauvin and Cocodrie in the past two months.
Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said 27-year-old Simon Pellegrin and 21-year-old Catelyn Trahan, both of Bourg, were booked with 40 counts of simple burglary.
Larpenter says Pellegrin was also booked with possession of a stolen vehicle, possession of heroin and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Larpenter said Tuesday the two forcibly entered the camps and took items including televisions, other electronics and tools. After a two-month investigation, he says they were found early Monday morning in west Houma trying to sell some of the stolen items.

LSU seeks annexation
BATON ROUGE (AP) — LSU has submitted a request to annex its south campus properties into Baton Rouge city limits.
The petition was submitted Wednesday less than 24 hours after L’Auberge Casino and Hotel, a high-profile revenue generator in the parish, also made known its intentions to join Baton Rouge.
Annexing properties is a tool the city of Baton Rouge has been employing to chip away at both the revenue streams and footprint of the proposed city of St. George.
If the proposed city is successful in its incorporation, it could divert millions of tax dollars from Baton Rouge coffers into the St. George municipal budget.

Terrebonne couple arrested in 40 camp burglaries
HOUMA (AP) — Terrebonne Parish authorities say a man and woman are accused of stealing more than $40,000 worth of items from 40 camps in Chauvin and Cocodrie in the past two months.
Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said 27-year-old Simon Pellegrin and 21-year-old Catelyn Trahan, both of Bourg, were booked with 40 counts of simple burglary.
Larpenter says Pellegrin was also booked with possession of a stolen vehicle, possession of heroin and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Larpenter said Tuesday the two forcibly entered the camps and took items including televisions, other electronics and tools. After a two-month investigation, he says they were found early Monday morning in west Houma trying to sell some of the stolen items.