Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser's Plaquemines Parish home was burglarized Thursday, according to the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office.
The criminals took sports memorabilia and rare coins, WDSU reported. Nungesser said he was in the process of moving during the break-in
The Highway 23 home, located in Point Celeste, was also damaged by a small kitchen fire that occurred during the burglary, according to the Sheriff's Office.
"We're still investigating, but at this time, it's believed that the fire was unintentional," said Lt. Chaun Domingue, spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.
That sounds bad. I feel bad for Billy. I hope they didn't get his socks. But because of certain circumstances and Billy's status as a person of some prominence, we do have to ask if there's something beyond just simple burglary going on here. We do know, for example, that this wouldn't be the first time something strange happened to collectibles under Billy's supervision. In 2017, he was involved in "some pretty strange crap" along those lines.
Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser has been using a Lower Pontalba Building apartment and space in other state museum buildings in the French Quarter for his personal benefit and has engaged in a pattern of political interference with the agency's operations, the Louisiana State Museum's interim director said Monday while resigning in protest.
Nungesser’s interference includes attempting to override museum officials and board members who objected to plans to loan U.S. Sen. John Kennedy artworks for his office in Washington, D.C., and threatening to sell museum works of art on eBay to raise funds, said Tim Chester, a museum consultant who took the interim position in October.
“I have never encountered anything like this in the 40 years I’ve worked in the field, ever,” Chester said. “I’ve seen some pretty strange crap come down in museums, but this one takes the cake.”
We also know that, intentional or otherwise, this would not be the first time a Louisiana politician or political operative suddenly found their home and/or car to have been set on fire. Let's look at a few relatively recent examples.
In 2009, a political gadfly/consultant type named Brian Welsh was involved in a stunt of a campaign promoting Stormy Daniels as a challenger to then Republican Senator David Vitter. Then his car burned up. Welsh went on the news to air his suspicions that Vitter's henchmen had it out for him. A lot of people were skeptical of this. (I was skeptical.) The fire department was also skeptical.
“It was a fire. The car didn’t explode,” said Public Information Officer Jonathan Pajeaud. An arson investigation is underway and foul play hasn’t been ruled out. But, Pajeaud said, Welsh told firefighters he’d recently gotten electrical work done on his 1996 Audi, and investigators are also looking into that as a possible cause.
Welsh told a local TV news station that police told him they’d never seen anything like it.
But, Pajeaud said, “Car fires here are very common.”
He added that investigators, on average, have a preliminary report in about two weeks. Pajeaud said that, for now, the investigation is being handled solely by the fire department and not by police. The police department has not responded to our questions.
Welsh persisted, however, posting surveillance videos that appear to show someone tampering with his car just before the fire happened. Still, nothing ever came of the investigation. "Car fires here are very common," after all.
In 2014, Mario Zervignon was consulting for a Public Service Commission campaign challenging Eric Skrmetta when this happened.
An apparent firebombing ignited a pair of early morning blazes Thursday in Uptown New Orleans, incinerating three vehicles and scorching a house in a startling scene that resembled a war zone. Federal law enforcement officials said they were investigating whether Mario Zervigon, a well-known political fundraiser, had been specifically targeted in the attack.
Flames engulfed Zervigon’s vehicles and quickly spread to his home at the corner of Prytania and Constantinople streets. Eight people escaped the home’s three apartments uninjured, but three cats were believed to have perished in the fire, said Katy Patterson, Zervigon’s wife, who made it out safely with Zervigon and the couple’s two young children.
If the Zervignon case was ever solved, I don't remember seeing it. Maybe someone can clear that up. Casual googling doesn't get me very far today. The usual pattern with these things is they happen, they look suspicious, we talk about them in the news, and then everyone forgets about them until the next one happens. Every now and then they solve one, though. In fact, that 2014 story also references a prior incident from 1997 that resulted in a guilty plea.
Firebombings, while exceedingly rare, are not unprecedented in New Orleans. Thursday’s incident recalled a series of intentional fires beginning in 1997 that targeted Stuart Smith, a vocal opponent of loud music in the French Quarter. Bar owner George Mellen Jr. pleaded guilty in 1999 to hiring an arsonist to toss Molotov cocktails at Smith’s home and vehicle on several occasions.
Here is more detail on that one in case anyone is interested. There are a lot of old favs in this story. None of them (including Stuart Smith, even though he was the victim of the attack) comes off looking particularly good.
Smith, a lifelong New Orleans resident who moved to the French Quarter in 1997, blamed the decline on the city's refusal to enforce noise and zoning ordinances.
But city officials said their hands are tied.
"Every time we come up with a resolution, we're sued by one side or another," said Councilman Troy Carter.
Mayor Marc Morial, who had all performers cleared out of Jackson Square when he was married there, has been otherwise reluctant to get involved. "A lot of what the complaining is about really has to do with the comeback of the entire city," Morial said. "The Quarter is not a suburban neighborhood."
The stance by Smith and his allies has at times drawn an aggressive response.
When Smith tried to stop the city from issuing a music license to an outdoor bar around the corner from his 5,000-square-foot home, Molotov cocktails scorched his Mercedes-Benz and rained down on his roof and into his courtyard. His home was not badly damaged.
The bar's owner, George Mellen Jr., and an associate, Richard Jones, pleaded guilty to conspiring to plant firebombs.
Unlike Mellen and Jones, the New Orleans Police officers who murdered Henry Glover and burned his body in a car after Hurricane Katrina did not plead guilty. Their convictions were overturned and they were eventually set free.
In 2015 a vehicle was set on fire near the site of a Planned Parenthood facility under construction. It was investigated as a suspected arson. Not sure if anything came of that either.
Then, in 2016, this happened.
A Lamborghini found burned to the ground Tuesday belonged to the owner of a Baton Rouge company that last week pulled out of a New Orleans contract to remove Confederate monuments after he had received death threats.
David Mahler’s Lamborghini, worth in excess of $200,000, was parked in the H&O Investments parking lot at 17425 Opportunity Ave., in Baton Rouge when flames were spotted from the air, said Roy Maughan Jr., Mahler’s attorney.
Immediately, we were told, we'd never really know what happened.
It’s likely investigators will never know how the fire started, though, as the evidence was destroyed in the fire, Tarleton said. He said the department has not ruled anything out.
All that was left of the car was the seat frames, the tires and a heap of melted debris.
Accidental car fires are not unusual, often caused by mechanical issues, he said.
These things just happen all the time. It's pretty amazing when you think about it. At least we won't go bored puzzling over the stream of unsolvable enigmas we're presented.
Did anyone ever figure this one out, by the way?
NEW ORLEANS — Someone set two vehicles on fire in a Lakeview neighborhood last week in an explosive moment caught on camera.
The man fires what appears to be a flare at one of the cars, soaked in gasoline, blowing it and another nearby vehicle up.
According to neighbors, it happened around 2:15 a.m. on July 29.
That's a strange story, right? Because of the long history of these, I thought it worth noting at the time that it was really close to qualifying week for the 2019 state legislative and executive elections. But nothing else surfaced in the news to connect back to it. It did have me looking sideways at some of the fishy goings on in the state house races. But there's no evidence any of it is related. Anyway, it's likely we'll never know.
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