Houma disaster averted

The story is all over the place now, how a Dularge volunteer fire captain living in Houma tried to kill himself and allegedly take some people with him, including an innocent guy walking on the street with his kids.

When the cops jumped on Daniel Paul Lirette the guy had eight – count them – eight loaded handguns and a loaded rifle, according to the official story.

That was after they evacuated the luxury apartments back behind Peppers Pizza, shortly after the trouble first began.

It was an off-duty Terrebonne Parish deputy, however, who set the stage for the whole operation.

Sheriff Jerry Larpenter won’t release the officer’s name, and at press time there is no way to obtain it otherwise, to let all of you know what a hero this cop truly is.

But of course there were a lot of heroes, because this was one more case of the guys and gals in the uniforms pouring in to a place from which everybody else is pouring out.

It all happened Saturday night, when the off-duty deputy, who lives in the complex, was told shots had been fired and wasted no time getting to the apartment, while uniformed officers were en route.

Lirette, witnesses said, was suicidal, and he had fired two rounds from a revolver inside the apartment at Belmere Luxury Apartments. The cops haven’t said if he fired at his wife, but she was home at the time.

While the building was being evacuated, the cops said, Lirette left the apartment with the aforementioned handguns and the rifle, firing the rifle at some poor guy who was just walking with his two kids. But nobody was hit.

With Lirette outside, the cops managed to overwhelm him and he was disarmed, then taken to Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center for an evaluation. Once that was done he was brought to the Terrebonne Jail and booked. For the record, the formal charges are three counts of illegal discharge of a firearm, three counts of aggravated assault with a firearm and one count of possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

His bond stands at $500,000.

It will be interesting to see if those charges stand or if they are elevated by a grand jury, or by District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr., say to attempted murder. But it’s too early to know that now.

What is known is that a lot of damage could have been done with those eight handguns, which even if they only held six rounds apiece, you are talking the potential for 48 shots being fired if things went sour, not counting what could have been done with the rifle.

But things didn’t go sour, because one cop knew what the best of them know, that you are never really off duty, and did what he could to make sure that things were okay until help arrived, based on what everybody has said so far.

And it was because the cops who did arrive that were on duty did as they had been taught, and somehow managed to make it so that neither the shooter nor anyone else was hurt, and this is to their credit as well as their bosses.

It’s not often that we get a chance to say thank you for the work these courageous men and women do, but this is one of those times.

That what occurred Saturday did not result in a CNN-scale tragedy can be attributed to the fates or God for sure. But it has to be attributed most certainly to every single law enforcement officer who was there, whether or not in uniform, whether or not on duty.

Talk to any of them and they will tell you it was all in day’s work, and that is what makes the special job they do that much more precious.