Shame on the Jefferson Parish Sheriff deputy that processed the incident report at Oschner Hospital; he should have connected the pieces as a result of his training and experience! This deputy met with a person with multiple stab wounds on May 19th, that drove a white truck identical to the surveillance photos, and no doubt the incident report had BSL's address showing he was from the same area as a missing college student earlier THAT day. For a victim to be so vague about details of where the crime occurred, to stop responding to questions and become "less cooperative" ... I would think this incident would stand out in the memory of a sheriff deputy! JMO :waitasec:
Was GPS tracking used in this investigation by the sheriff's dept to figure out where this incident may have occurred?
TV media showed surveillance photos & requested info over and over asking the public for info on a "white truck" with surveillance photos shown on TV, missing MICKEY posters plastered EVERYWHERE detailing dates/times and other info and this did not raise RED Flags with this deputy? We saw media reports in Houston, TX; no doubt Jefferson Parish received the same broadcasts.
Per KATC published: 07/13/2012 05:19 PM by Erin Steuber
May 19: The day Mickey Shunick went missing
KATC is working to fill in gaps in the timeline the day Mickey Shunick disappeared. Lets go back to the beginning of what we know.... whereabouts were unknown until we got our hands on a police report from Jefferson Parish. According to the report, on May 19, 21 hours after Mickey disappeared, Jefferson Parish Sheriffs deputies interviewed Lavergne at Oschner Hospital. Lavergne told them a stranger stabbed him earlier that day at a gas station, but he couldn't say where. He was stabbed in the chest, back, neck, and hand. Deputies say the more questions they asked, Lavergne became less and less cooperative. Lavergne was released from the hospital.
In the officer's defense, friends/family in NOLA told me the media coverage of Mickey's case was often just blips on the tv. Her missing posters were all over downtown/uptown NOLA but not so prominent in the suburbs like Jefferson Parish. My friend who is a LE officer in Baton Rouge didn't know about Mickey's case until a week or more after she went missing and I told him about it (he doesn't watch the local news or facebook, etc). I was SHOCKED at this and posted about it here.
And I (and others) realized how much of the population drives white 4 door trucks after the pics of the DWT were released. Seems like at least half of the male population in south Louisiana has them and about a third of those are 4 door Z71s (not really, but it seemed like it). Once you start looking for them around here, they are everywhere.
I'm also not sure the officer ever saw BSL's vehicle. I think the officer talked to BSL in/at the hospital. I think the hospital staff contacted LE and I can see the LE officer coming to emergency room or wherever BSL was in the hospital to take a report. BSL never mentioned his car being attacked/having evdience from the phantom attack/robery by the phantom Saints-jersey-wearing man so why would the officer need to be taken out to his car? I don't remember it being in the officer's report that the type of vehicle BSL had was ever mentioned. I think he may have said to the officer "I got out of my truck and then blah blah" but I don't think he told the officer "I got out of my four door white Z71 and then...." Plus, the pics of the Z71 weren't released until days after BSL went to Oschner/talked with the JP officer, so at that time, JP officer didn't know the truck was connected to the missing persons case...also at this time on Saturday evening May 20, I don't think many people besides Mickey's family & close friends knew she was missing. I'm not even sure LE had agreed to classify her as missing yet...they may have still been trying to convince her family to call local hospitals, wait and she may turn up, etc.
I think that was surely plenty of multi-institutional/jurisdictional blindness for a while in this case, but that it wasn't limited to the repsonding officer alone. I don't know if he even knew BSL drove a white 4 door Z71. I also don't know how much attention he paid to Mickey's case.
Many people I know wrote it off as either a drunk-driving accident someone was trying to cover up or even worse, when I told people about it, they responded with "well, she was riding her bike alone at 2am!" like her case didn't deserve their attention because she had invited whatever had happened by being out late alone (this was something I never heard people in Lafayette say, but in BR and the NOLA suburbs), I heard it many, many times. My mom put one of Mickey's missing posters in her yard in NOLA and her neighbor came out and sneered at it and said "well, don't ride your bike at 2am." This neighbor has a daughter who graudated from UL who surely at one time or another was out alone at 2am, even if it was just walking from her car to her front door. The daughter still lives in the Lafayette area and I was shocked that she was so unconcerned that a potential abductor could be living so close to her daughter.
