Deputy resigns after DWI arrest; was 3 times above legal limit
June 30, 2016
Voting should be easy
July 4, 2016
A Houma man with a lengthy criminal history, most recently accused of raping a female relative multiple times since his last release from prison, was found hanged in the Terrebonne Parish jail’s medical section Sunday.
Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter confirmed that Don Chauvin Jr., 44, was found hanged Sunday morning at about 10:30 a.m. and that the death is believed to have been a suicide. An official determination will have to be made by the parish coroner.
“The detectives investigated it and what they determined is that he decided to use a bathroom in a cell and leaned over and suffocated himself,” Larpenter said in a telephone interview Sunday night. “They found him within a few minutes. He left the jail with a pulse, Acadian took him to a hospital and he died I believe at the hospital.”
Houma City Police booked Chauvin into the jail Tuesday on one count of 3rd Degree Rape and one count of a crime against nature, said a spokesman, Sgt. Travis Theriot. City police also confirmed that an additional charge involving another victim was pending. The victim of the alleged rape was a female relative; The Times is withholding the nature of the family relationship and her name.
Details of the complaint were not released by the city police.
In addition to the sex crime charges, Chauvin was also booked for a parole violation. The alleged rapes occurred over a six-month span of time.
Chauvin’s prior criminal history, which spans decades, includes domestic violence, assault, battery, manufacture and possession of illegal drugs, burglary and cruelty to juveniles, according to court records.
In 2013 Chauvin, along with two other people, was charged in connection with a burglary at Houma Boat Works. During a prison term he was transferred to the Terrebonne Parish work release, where he was assigned a job at the Texas Roadhouse restaurant on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
In Feb. of 2015 he walked off the job and was sought by police, who found him hiding under a house the next day, with an injured leg that turned gangrenous. Chauvin was returned to the Department of Corrections. He sued the work release program and the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office unsuccessfully for loss of the leg, alleging poor medical treatment.
On Sunday, according to Sheriff’s Office employees, Chauvin had asked another inmate in the medical section to use the bathroom. When he did not come out authorities were notified. The bathroom was not equipped with a camera.
