RiskAlert INCIDENT REPORT 473 – ACTIVE SHOOTER 12-27-2013
Oschner Hospital Administrator Shot to Death in his Home in Active Shooter Spree
Dateline: December 27, 2013 pm
A Louisiana man attacked his former in-laws, his current wife, and the Administrator of a hospital
where he’d worked, killing three and wounding three others before killing himself, authorities said.
The shooter, Ben Freeman, 38, was found late Thursday night in his car along a highway,
dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
The shootings happened at four locations in two parishes about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans
on Thursday. The first report came about 6:40 p.m., when Lafourche Parish Councilman Louis Phillip
Gouaux, who was shot in the throat, called 911 from his home in Lockport, Houma, La.
The suspect, Ben Freeman, 38, was the ex-husband of Gouaux’s daughter Jeanne, Lafourche Parish
Sheriff’s Office spokesman Brennan Matherne said in a news release.
Gouaux’s wife, Susan “Pixie” Gouaux, was dead when deputies arrived. Louis Phillip Gouaux and his
daughter, Andrea Gouaux, were injured and taken to Interim LSU Public Hospital in New Orleans.
Both were in critical but stable condition, Matherne said.
About 20 minutes later in Raceland, Ochsner St. Anne General Hospital Administrator Milton Bourgeois
was shot and killed at close range at his home. His wife, Ann Bourgeois, was shot in the leg, and taken
to the New Orleans hospital, where she was listed in stable condition. Raceland police said Bourgeois
was shot at close range and his wife was shot in the leg.
Freeman had been employed at three area hospitals over the last few years, including Oschner St. Anne Hospital, where Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said he had been a registered nurse before he was fired in 2011. All three hospitals were put on lockdown for a while Thursday.
Freeman’s wife, Denise Taylor Freeman, was found dead in the couple’s home in Houma in Terrebonne Parish. Matherne said her cause of death was not immediately known.
RISKAlert is a publication of Risk & Security LLC at www.riskandsecurityllc.com.