Louisiana
‘We can’t make it through a sunny day.’ Jefferson Parish asks for answers on power outages
The Jefferson Parish Council will hear from representatives from Entergy and the Louisiana Public Service Commission next week regarding a slew of major power outages that have afflicted the parish this year.
At-large Councilman Scott Walker announced on social media Tuesday that an Entergy representative will appear at the next council meeting scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 7. Also in attendance will be Public Service Commissioner Davante Lewis, who represents portions of the West Bank including Westwego.
Walker also reached out to Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, who represents most of the parish, but is awaiting response. Skrmetta did not respond to requests for comment from The Times-Picayune on Wednesday.
I invited an Entergy representative to appear at our next council meeting on August 7. He accepted. I also invited PSC Eric Skrmetta and am awaiting a response.
The council doesn’t regulate Entergy Louisiana, but we intend to get some answers.
— Councilman Scott Walker (@ScottWalkerJP) July 30, 2024
“The council doesn’t regulate Entergy Louisiana, but we intend to get some answers,” Walker wrote in a post.
While New Orleans City Council has the power to regulate the electric utility within city limits, Jefferson Parish cannot impose regulations on Entergy Louisiana. That responsibility lies with the state’s Public Service Commission.
In the hours before Walker’s announcement Tuesday, Entergy’s outage map reported more than 14,000 Metairie residents without power for nearly an hour, which the company said was caused by an equipment issue at the substation.
More than 14,000 Entergy customers are without power in Metairie
It was the third day in a row of widespread outages in the parish, as the West Bank saw 2,300 outages the day before and the east bank experienced 6,300 outages Sunday.
Walker tallied 14 outages in the parish so far this year that each affected anywhere between 795 to over 30,000 residents. He attributed the outages to weather-related events or “random” causes.
Five of those outages took place in July.
“Right now we can’t make it through a sunny day,” Walker said in an interview, calling Tuesday’s outages the “tipping point” for him to call the hearing.
Entergy spokesman Brandon Scardigli said in a statement Wednesday that crews were working to identify the cause of recent outages, install new equipment and upgrade existing systems. He added that projects under the company’s new grid-hardening plan would start in the parish “imminently.”
Gripes with the electric utility company aren’t unique or new — Entergy Louisiana ranked last among large utilities in the South in a recent customer satisfaction survey conducted by J.D. Power, and Kenner’s City Council has hosted multiple discussions with Entergy representatives regarding problems.
The New Orleans City Council held its own hearing with Entergy New Orleans on Tuesday to discuss spikes in outages there, as the city has seen 1,600 outages so far this year.
“Entergy owes the people of Louisiana much more answers than what they’ve given about these challenges, especially with the amount of increasing they’ve been asking the commission to apply to customer bills,” said Lewis, the commission’s newest member who’s vowed to be aggressive with utilities.
Lewis said he’s been “very frustrated and upset” by the lack of information he’s gotten as to where, why and how long outages have occurred. Walker theorized the parish’s energy infrastructure is outdated and needs major upgrades to better withstand inclement weather.
“We keep replacing wooden poles with wooden poles, which seems like an exercise in futility,” Walker said.
Jefferson Parish customers pay about $13 per month in storm restoration fees to repair the grid from previous disasters.
Terry Almon, president of the Bonnabel Civic Association — one of the neighborhoods hit by Tuesday’s outages — said frustrated residents want better communication from Entergy on why the power goes out, especially when it’s not weather- or accident-related.
“They need to be upfront no matter what, whether it’s good news or bad news,” Almon said. “Any time a public entity is transparent, it serves them well.”
DESTIN, Fla. — A North Carolina man allegedly headed to do a mass shooting at a large Louisiana festival was arrested in Okaloosa County Wednesday evening.
Federal authorities contacted the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office in regards to the man. The department was told the man would be in the area.
The man’s name has not been shared by authorities.
Deputies found the man at a Destin Hotel. They took him into custody as a “fugitive from justice.”
The man will be extradited to Louisiana to face state charges, deputies say.
Louisiana
Mom whose 3 children were killed in Louisiana mass shooting still has bullet lodged in face — and sometimes thinks kids are alive
The mother of three of the eight children massacred by deranged Army veteran dad Shamar Elkins in Louisiana still has a bullet lodged in her head and is struggling with her memory — sometimes believing her kids are still alive, according to a relative.
Christina Snow, the girlfriend of 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, was shot in the face early Sunday when the former National Guardsman went on a shooting rampage at two nearby homes in Shreveport.
Three of Snow’s children she shared with Elkins — Braylon Snow, 5, Khedarrion Snow, 6, and Sariahh Snow, 11 — were killed in their home.
Elkins fired a bullet through Snow’s nose which is lodged in her head, and doctors aren’t ready to risk surgery, according to her cousin Jamarckus Snow.
The mom is now dealing with heartbreaking memory loss about the fate of her kids.
“One day, she’ll remember they’re dead. I heard yesterday she woke up and was like, ‘I got to get my kids ready for school.’ She’ll lose memory of what happened,” he told NBC News.
“One day, she’ll know, and the next day, she’s thinking her kids is still there.”
Follow the latest updates on the Louisiana father who killed 8 children in Shreveport shooting:
Elkins fatally shot his seven children — the three he shared with Snow and his four daughters with his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh: Jayla Elkins, 3, Shayla Elkins, 5, Kayla Pugh, 6, and Layla Pugh, 7.
He also killed Mar’Kaydon Pugh, 10, the son of his wife’s sister, who was staying at their house.
The vet turned his gun on Pugh and Snow, too, severely wounding both women, who are still in the hospital.
Elkins shot himself in the driveway of his former military mentor as law enforcement closed in.
The motive for the shooting remains unclear, but Elkins was suffering from mental health issues and was scheduled to appear in court on Monday after Pugh asked him for a divorce.
Louisiana
Federal appeals court upholds Texas’ Ten Commandments law. What does it mean for Louisiana?
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a Texas law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments, just weeks after the same court allowed a similar Louisiana law to take effect.
A majority of judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ law, which is nearly identical to Louisiana’s, is constitutional and does not violate students’ religious freedom. In February, the court lifted an injunction on Louisiana’s law, which cleared schools to put up the posters, but the judges said it was too early to rule on that law’s constitutionality.
Tuesday’s ruling could bode well for Louisiana’s law if it eventually returns to the 5th Circuit, considered the country’s most conservative federal court of appeals.
In their majority opinion, the judges rejected the argument that posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms would pressure students to honor the biblical mandates or adopt particular beliefs.
“To plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree,” the majority wrote about the Texas law, known as S.B. 10. A minority of the court’s active judges dissented.
Even though Tuesday’s ruling only addressed the Texas case, defenders of Louisiana’s legislation celebrated it as a victory. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the 5th Circuit’s argument in upholding Texas’ law was identical to the one Louisiana made in defense of its law.
“Our law clearly was always constitutional,” she posted on X, “and I am grateful that the Fifth Circuit has now definitively agreed with us.”
Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in 2024, which requires all public K-12 schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. A group of parents quickly challenged the law in court, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the state from enforcing the law.
In February, the 5th Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, saying it had been premature to block the law before it took effect. The judges said they could not rule on the law’s constitutionality before seeing how it played out in schools.
But in the case of Texas’ law, which that state’s Republican-led Legislature passed in 2025, the court did rule on the merits.
Rejecting arguments made by attorneys for the Texas families who challenged the law, the 5th Circuit majority said that requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments does not amount to the government endorsing a particular religion, which the U.S. Constitution forbids. The law also does not impose religious beliefs on students, the judges wrote.
“As noted, S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’),” the majority opinion says. “No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”
The Texas families were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The same groups, including Louisiana’s ACLU chapter, represented the Louisiana families.
In a statement Tuesday, the organizations said they are “extremely disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling, adding that they expect to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” the groups said. “This decision tramples those rights.”
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