Louisiana news briefs

Missing woman’s body found in pond
OBERLIN — The body of a missing Elton woman has been found in a Eunice pond.
Allen Parish Sheriff Doug Hebert says 61-year-old Earthy Maye Griffin was reported missing by her husband around 9:15 a.m. Monday.
Hebert says she was last seen around 10 a.m. that day in Eunice when she was picked up by a couple from Elton who knew her.
Authorities recovered Griffin’s body at 11:49 p.m. Tuesday after tracing her cellphone to a pond area located off U.S. 190 in Eunice. Hebert says there were no immediate signs of trauma to the body.
Foul play is not suspected.

B.R. General to close its Mid City emergency room
BATON ROUGE — The Baton Rouge General Medical Center Mid City will close its hospital emergency room within the next 60 days.
The announcement came in a news release issued Tuesday morning by Baton Rouge General President and CEO Mark Slyter.
The hospital’s board of directors had voted last August to close the emergency room in November, a casualty of growing red ink associated with uninsured patients entering its doors.

Board to begin new Supt. search
BATON ROUGE (AP) — The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board plans to debate at a special meeting today whether to start advertising for a new superintendent with Bernard Taylor’s three-year contract ending June 30.
Board President David Tatman announced the special meeting on Tuesday.
In December, several board members pushed to extend Taylor’s contract but the effort lacked enough votes to pass and the item was withdrawn. Six months earlier the board voted 10-1 not to extend his contract when it expired.
The school board in the past has hired search firms to conduct nationwide searches when it needed to find a new superintendent.

Woman sentenced for stealing $600K
BATON ROUGE (AP) — A Baton Rouge woman who embezzled nearly $600,000 from the outpatient surgical center where she worked has been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison.
Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson on Tuesday ordered 53-year-old Donna M. Dodson to pay $589,680 to her victims and to forfeit an additional $589,680 — the proceeds of her fraudulent scheme.
Dodson was sentenced to 63 months in prison for five counts of wire fraud.
Dodson was office manager at Advanced Surgical Care in Baton Rouge from 2009 until mid-2013.

Reward offered for goat beheading info
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Louisiana SPCA says community donations have tripled the reward in the beheading of a housecat-sized baby goat and the disappearance of its twin brother.
The reward is now $3,000 for information leading to conviction of whoever killed the hybrid of pygmy and dwarf goats.
The SPCA say neither its investigators nor New Orleans police have any good leads about the location of the missing goat or its brother’s head, which also was taken last Wednesday night or Thursday morning.
SPCA spokesman Alicia Haefele says investigators think the perpetrator may have been in a group of teenagers who argued with the owner after he allegedly found them bothering the goats.
Their owners contract with people and agencies who want goats to eat weeds and trim grass.