Decision upheld in tugboat captain’s conviction

A Houma tugboat captain found guilty of the fatal shooting of a deckhand has lost an appeal of his murder conviction and life sentence.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the death of Ryan Andras, 26, of Thibodaux, was murder and not an accident as Capt. Louis Ledet, 44, of Houma, had contended.

The crime occurred June 18, 2003 while the two men were aboard the tugboat Captain EJ in the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway in Amelia.

The appeals court issued its decision earlier this month, nearly two years after Ledet was convicted of second-degree murder by a jury in Assumption Parish. The charge carries a mandatory life prison sentence without parole.

Ledet and his deckhands n Andras and Alvin Dardar n were the only people aboard the boat, when Ledet and Andras began tussling over the defendant’s .30-caliber Ruger revolver.

Ledet claimed Andras tried to grab his gun off the dashboard, and that the two were “horseplaying,” when Ledet picked up his gun, which had a hair trigger, and cocked it. The gun went off and a bullet hit Andras.

Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Sgt. Bryon Parker, who took Ledet to the parish jail, said the captain told him that he said to Andras that he was “going to make him see God.”

Ledet appealed unsuccessfully to have the conversation suppressed, noting he was under the influence of cocaine when it occurred. Dardar testified that Andras was trying to push the gun away from the back of his head when it fired.