BOYCE, La. (KALB) – UPDATE: Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed that officials have located a plane along the west side of Cleco Lake (AKA Lake Rodemacher) at around 5 p.m. on March 22.

RPSO said search and rescue teams have been unable to reach the plane so far as it is in a dense and swampy area of the forest.

No details on the type of plane nor the number of passengers were available from authorities at this time.

RPSO said the National Transportation Safety Board should be on scene by Monday and that all further information will go through them.

The following agencies are all involved in the search at this time:

• RPSO
• Louisiana State Police
• Pineville Fire and Rescue
• Alexandria Fire Department
• Rapides Fire District-2
• Cotile Volunteer Fire
• Flatwoods Volunteer Fire
• Pafford Ambulance Service
• Louisiana State Forestry Service
• Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

PRIOR REPORT:

News Channel 5 was on scene near Boyce at around 3 p.m. after residents reported a possible plane crash around Cotile Lake on Sunday, March 22.

Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office released details of the search so far.

RPSO said they received reports of a possible plane crash at around 2:30 p.m. on Sunday.

They, alongside Cotile Volunteer Fire Department, Flatwoods Volunteer Fire Department, Taylor Hill Volunteer Fire Department and Louisiana State Police have begun searching the area.

As of 4 p.m., RPSO said they have not found a plane.

RPSO said the Federal Aviation Authority and National Transportation Safety Board have been notified.

More details to come.

This is a developing story.

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Tulane closed its opening event of the outdoor track and field season Saturday at Home Bank Soccer and Track Complex with 16 top-10 finishers. Highlighting the Green Wave’s success in the Louisiana Classics were Cara Salsberry and Nahema Dumonteil Cabanas, who each picked up wins Saurday in the hammer throw and 400 meter hurdles, respectively.

TU Field Events Do Well

Salsberry entered the program’s all-time top 10 Friday in the discus, and she followed up with an even better day on Saturday. She opened the day for Tulane with the hammer throw, boasting a mark of 57.97m to win the event and place second in program history. She now trails only the program record of 58.27m, set by Jacqueline Esmay in 2018. Not to be outdone, Dumonteil Cabanas earned a win on the track for the Wave in the 400 meter hurdles. She ran a 1:00.81 to top the field and rank ninth all-time in program history.

They were two of Tulane’s 16 total top-10 finishes across all events. In the field competitions, Dumonteil Cabanas shined again with a personal best of 1.62m in the high jump to place fourth. Camille Cummings notched a pole vault mark of 3.15m to finish sixth, and Sofie Groeninger was also sixth in the long jump with a mark of 5.56m.

Wave Track Leads the Way

Tulane shined brightest on the track. For the women, Eliza Brand and Morgan Matthews each finished in the top 10 of the 1,500m. Brand was second with a time of 4:40.66, and Matthews placed sixth with her clip of 4:48.08. In the men’s 1,500m, the Wave accrued a quartet of top-10 placements. Samuel Cohen and Paul James Pam each ran personal bests to place second and third, respectively. Cohen posted a mark of 4:00.23 with Pam at 4:00.37. Roman Schrader was right behind with a 4:01.39 in fourth, and Jalen St. Fort finished seventh with a clip of 4:02.72, a new personal best.

In the women’s 400 meters, Marissa Gordon recorded a personal best of 56.59 to finish seventh. Zaria Parker was eighth in the 100 meters with her time of 11.76, and Brand secured her second top 10 of the day in the 800 meters with a clip of 2:19.26 to place sixth.

Tulane’s last two top-10 finishes were in a pair of women’s relay races. In the 4×100 meters, the team of Bella Carroll, Parker, Cosette Fleury, and Brianna Brand ran a 47.51 to finish fourth. In the 4×400 meters, Caroll, Groeninger, Parker, and Bryanna Fears placed sixth with a mark of 3:57.09.

With the outdoor season now underway, Tulane returns to action next weekend with a trip to Raleigh, North Carolina, for the Raleigh Relays. The three-day event is hosted by North Carolina State and begins on Thursday, March 26, and runs through Saturday, March 28.

Portions Courtesy Tulane Athletics

A Louisiana man who resigned as a Roman Catholic deacon after a priest molested his son and then was excommunicated from the church entirely by his local bishop is asking global church leaders to inform him of the fate of his appeal against the prelate’s decision, something that was supposed to be resolved more than a year earlier.

In a letter to the Vatican entity in charge of clerical discipline, a canon – or church – law attorney representing Scott Peyton asserts that his case is “nuanced and requires careful consideration”. “To the extent that the delay reflects such diligence, he is grateful,” said the letter to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), prepared by Dawn Eden Goldstein on 3 February and obtained recently by the Guardian.

Nonetheless, the letter continued, Peyton “wishes that I convey to you that, from his perspective, the unduly long span of time with no communication from your office only compounds the injustices that he and his family have suffered from the church”.

Word of Peyton’s plight earned international news headlines in March 2024, with many outlets characterizing his excommunication as a remarkably harsh consequence that his child’s molester does not appear to have ever faced because the church, in sum, does not consider the abuser’s offense on its own excommunicable.

Peyton was ordained into Louisiana’s diocese of Lafayette – about 135 miles (217km) west of New Orleans – as a deacon in 2012. Deacons are largely similar to priests, though they can join the clergy despite being married.

About six years after his ordination, a priest with whom Peyton ministered at St Peter’s church in Morrow, Louisiana, confessed to molesting the deacon’s teenage son, Oliver, and was arrested by authorities.

Michael Guidry, now 83, later pleaded guilty to abusing Oliver Peyton, who was an altar server. He received a seven-year prison sentence after his church feted him with a farewell lunch for which the diocese was forced to apologize.

In 2021, Peyton said he, his wife, Letitia, and Oliver secured a $350,000 settlement from Lafayette’s diocese to settle a civil lawsuit without a trial. The Peytons, meanwhile, have become advocates for clergy abuse survivors. And in December 2023, Scott Peyton decided he was no longer a good fit to serve as a deacon in the diocese, quit and went on to join an Anglican church’s congregation.

Lafayette bishop J Douglas Deshotel responded to those developments by issuing a 13 March 2024 decree informing Peyton he had been excommunicated, effective immediately.

“I am aware that your family has suffered a trauma but the answer does not lie in leaving the Most Holy Eucharist,” Deshotel wrote, adding that “we are not Catholics because the church … is perfect”.

For pious Catholics, excommunication is as severe a punishment as there is, preventing recipients of it from engaging in certain sacraments as a way to essentially shock them into rethinking their sinful behavior before death condemns them to damnation. Among the most famous Catholic excommunicates are Henry VIII (over a divorce and remarriage), Napoleon Bonaparte (for annexing the Papal States within Italy to France) and Martin Luther (for igniting the Reformation).

Peyton formally appealed his excommunication to the DDF in May 2024, arguing in part that “there was no pastoral good to be accomplished” by his censure. He also contended that his wife and six children feel unwelcome in the Catholic church because of his excommunication, meaning the punishment has “harmed the spiritual lives of eight Catholics”.

That appeal ostensibly initiated an adjudication process that generally should be completed in three months.

Deshotel wrote to Peyton in October 2024 – five months later – notifying him that his appeal “material … has been received and is currently being evaluated” by the DDF. The bishop said he sent that letter at the behest of the DDF’s secretary, Archbishop John Joseph Kennedy.

It had been well over a year since that missive when Goldstein herself wrote to Kennedy in early February asking for at least an update concerning the status of her client’s appeal. She argued that the “harm” raised in Peyton’s appeal “continues every day that [it] goes unanswered”.

Goldstein also wrote to Kennedy asking him to inform Oliver Peyton of Guidry’s “current canonical status and any penalties that may have been imposed upon him” after the latter’s guilty plea.

Neither inquiry had gotten a reply as of Saturday.

Furthermore, neither a Lafayette diocese spokesperson nor Guidry’s criminal defense attorney immediately responded when sent a message asking whether he had been laicized, or removed from the priesthood.

Many Catholic clergymen convicted of child molestation over the years have been allowed to remain in the priesthood. Some abusers who have left the priesthood have done so voluntarily.

The late Francis was the pope when Peyton first filed his excommunication appeal. The pope now is Leo XIV, who was elected to succeed Francis in May 2025 and became history’s first US-born pontiff.

Another abusive Lafayette diocese priest named Gilbert Gauthe all but brought the worldwide, decades-old Catholic clergy abuse crisis to the US’s collective conscience by pleading guilty in 1985 to molesting several boys he met through his ministry.

More recently, Lafayette’s diocese unsuccessfully asked Louisiana’s supreme court to strike down a state law passed in 2021 which eliminated filing deadlines for lawsuits seeking damages over child molestation that occurred long ago.