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GRETNA, La. (AP) — A former sheriff’s dispatcher in a suburb of New Orleans has been arrested, accused of refusing to return more than $1.2 million that had been accidentally deposited into her brokerage account, authorities said. Kelyn Spadoni, 33, was taken into custody Wednesday on charges of theft valued over $25,000, bank fraud and illegal transmission of monetary funds, nola.com and WVUE-TV reported. The reports said she was fired by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office after her arrest.

A 66-year-old Virginia musician and pastor who had questioned coronavirus media coverage died from the disease after a trip to New Orleans. A 66-year-old Virginia resident who fell ill with the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, on a trip to New Orleans died Wednesday morning at a hospital in Concord, North Carolina. The death of Landon Spradlin, an accomplished musician and a pastor, has drawn viral attention online, in part because earlier this month Spradlin questioned whether media coverage of the disease was overblown. Spradlin lived in Gretna, a small town in Pittsylvania County, about halfway between Lynchburg and Danville. While...

Two members of a police department in a New Orleans suburb were fired Monday — one for a Facebook post calling U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “vile idiot” and suggesting that she be shot, the other for “liking” the post. Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson announced the terminations Monday. Officer Charlie Rispoli was fired for a post saying Ocasio-Cortez “needs a round” and not “the kind she used to serve” — an apparent reference to her having once been a bartender. Officer Angelo Varisco was fired for “liking” the post. “It’s very disappointing,” Lawson said, adding that the Gretna department...

Seventy years after he was fatally shot by police after trying to help a woman at a Gretna bus stop, the life of Royal Cyril Brooks was honored Saturday (April 28) at a ceremony in Harvey. Politicians, churchgoers and Brooks' family members filled the pews inside Mt. Pilgrim Baptist Church to remember the 44-year-old trade unionist killed Feb. 27, 1948 while waiting to board a bus at Gretna Ferry Landing. A woman had boarded the wrong bus and requested her fare of a nickel back. Bus driver Preston Herbert refused to refund her, but Brooks offered to ride on her...

A Gretna man accused of setting election posters on fire in his neighborhood was booked on multiple arson counts Sunday (Oct. 5), authorities said. Nathan Michael Palencia, 20, was booked on three counts of simple arson, police said. He is accused of lighting two election posters and one for sale sign on fire around 2:30 a.m. Sunday.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday that those law enforcement officers who barred pedestrians from crossing the Crescent City Connection in the hectic days after Hurricane Katrina will not face federal prosecution. After a review of Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti's investigation into the incident, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division found the bridge had been blocked for public safety reasons and that there was no sufficient evidence to prove that the officers intentionally broke the law.U.S. Attorney Jim Letten agreed, and the case was closed. "This is not a commentary on what should have happened or how people...

Gretna police officers knew they faced a man with a violent past when they went to arrest him three months ago, leading to an altercation in which the suspect fought with a police dog that bit him in the groin area, Police Chief Arthur Lawson said Wednesday in response to a lawsuit filed over the matter.Lawson defended his department's canines and denied accusations that one of his officers intentionally ordered his dog, Zin, to attack Cody Melancon while arresting him May 30 in his Monroe Street apartment. Melancon tried to flee and then fought with the dog

A 25-year-old man sued the Gretna Police Department Tuesday, alleging his civil rights were violated by a police officer who sicced his canine on him without provocation, leading the dog to bite

A national American-Islamic group is calling on local, state and national law enforcement authorities to investigate an alleged incident in which a Muslim woman was ejected from the Oakwood mall near Gretna for refusing a security guard's demand to remove her headscarf, known as a hijab.

Louisiana Woman Charged After Hurricane Katrina Left Area in Ruins GRETNA, La. (Jan. 13) - A church deaconess and great-grandmother jailed for two weeks after being accused of looting sausage during Hurricane Katrina will not be prosecuted. Merlene Maten, 73, learned of the decision Wednesday when she appeared in court for her arraignment, said her attorney, Daniel Becnel III. "My God tells me it's best to give than to receive. So for anybody to even think of accusing me of doing something like that, it just sickens me to my stomach. But thank God, thank God, thank God it's over,"...

Some members of a crowd of hundreds of people fleeing New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina who were barred from crossing a bridge to Gretna, La., by police firing shotguns in the air tell correspondent Ed Bradley that they feared for their lives. They also say that the officers’ actions were racist. Most of the people in that crowd were African-Americans. But the mayor of Gretna says stopping them on the bridge to Gretna – then the only way out of New Orleans – was justified because Gretna couldn’t absorb any more evacuees. The shotgun blasts, he says, were necessary to...

Little over a week after this mostly white suburb became a symbol of callousness for using armed officers to seal one of the last escape routes from New Orleans — trapping thousands of mostly black evacuees in the flooded city — the Gretna City Council passed a resolution supporting the police chief's move. "This wasn't just one man's decision," Mayor Ronnie C. Harris said Thursday. "The whole community backs it." Three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Gretna officers blocked the Mississippi River bridge that connects their city to New Orleans, exacerbating the sometimes troubled relationship with their neighbor. The blockade...

Think local officials are less to blame for deaths in New Orleans than federal officials? In the most jaw-dropping story of the week, UPI has the police chief of Gretna, Louisiana, admitting that he closed off one of the major arteries out of New Orleans on Monday, before the storm hit: "We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit. "All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said....