Richard Verdin Jr
It was a drug deal gone bad that prompted a Dulac man to drive to a Bayou Grand Caillou dock Sunday, shoot at one shrimper and kill another, police said.
Neither shrimper was involved in the alleged drug deal, police said.
Richard Verdin Jr., 29, 7434 Shrimpers Row, was arrested about 12:30 a.m. today, police said.
Witnesses say they saw a man, which police now say was Verdin, argue with several others near the moored Blue Angel, a boat captained by Vo. Police now say the men argued about drugs.
Verdin briefly left the boat, docked at 9576 Grand Caillou Road near Jensen’s Seafood, and returned with a shotgun.
He shot at a deckhand first, who dodged the bullet by jumping into the water, then turned his shotgun on Vo, said Vo’s employer Sochen Lam. Lam said he heard the details second-hand from the deckhand, who had been taken to Lafayette Monday to provide a description of the then unknown suspect to a police sketch artist.
First responders pronounced Vo dead on the scene. The deckhand was not injured.
Verdin is charged with second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder. He was in the Terrebonne Parish jail this morning awaiting a bond hearing, deputies said.
If not for the threat of Tropical Storm Debby, Vo would have been trawling for shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico Sunday afternoon, Lam said.
Forecasters had warned that the storm could hit south Louisiana, sending boaters to safe harbor. The storm later turned toward Florida and is predicted to make landfall there later this week.
“If the weather was good, …” Lam said, “nothing would have happened.”
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