Big news for Rapides Parish

We at the Winn Parish Journal are pleased to welcome our newest sister publication, the Rapides Parish Journal. This online publication joins 11 others across Louisiana from Rapides Parish north to the state line.

“We feel the people of Rapides Parish – Alexandria, Pineville, Tioga, Woodworth, Ball, Forest Hill, and surrounding towns – deserve their own publication,” said publisher Bill Vance. “At Journal Services LLC, we pride ourselves in covering local parishes with high-quality news and advertising to keep our readers up to date on what’s happening in their communities.”

Vance is also the publisher of the Natchitoches Parish Journal.

All Journals cover local news, features, and sports. Subscriptions are – and always will be – free. Please visit www.rapidesparishjournal.com and sign up today.

Click to visit any of our journals:

Bienville Parish Journal
Claiborne Parish Journal
DeSoto Parish Journal
Jackson Parish Journal
Lincoln Parish Journal
Natchitoches Parish Journal,
Sabine Parish Journal
Shreveport-Bossier Journal
Red River Parish Journal
Webster Parish Journal
Winn Parish Journal
Rapides Parish Journal


Winnfield baseball home Friday, Saturday in state playoffs

Winnfield Senior High School opens the LHSAA Non-Select Division III baseball playoffs at home Friday, starting a best-of-three second-round series against visiting Westlake.

The Tigers, seeded eighth, and the No. 9 Rams collide at 6 o’clock Friday evening at WSHS, then play game two Saturday morning at 11. If a third game is necessary to send the series winner to the state quarterfinals, it will take place at 1 Saturday afternoon.

The other parish team in postseason, Calvin High School, had its season stopped in a 14-inning battle. The No. 12 Bulldogs carried a 2-all tie into the 14th but No. 21 Holden broke loose for eight runs and recorded a 10-2 triumph.


Louisiana Forest Festival: 43 Annual

Organizers could not have asked for a more perfect day for the 43rd annual Louisiana Forest Festival held in Winnfield on Saturday, April 22. With a blue, sunny sky and just enough clouds to hold down temperatures, a light breeze flowed through the Timber Sports arena on the hilltop. It was the type of day that parents might want to take their children to the Fairgrounds for a time of fun…and many did, with crowd estimates of at least 1,500.

It was a festival that delivered on all its promises. The “Hope for Winn Run” drew twice the participants as last year. A crowd gathered at the amphitheater for music while children threw Frisbees and found other amusements for themselves. Food trucks and booths along the midway provided “eats” for all tastes, some certainly available only at fairs and festivals. Other tables and booths offered gifts and souvenirs for festival-goers or their kids and grandkids. Down in the pavilions were arts and crafts.

While this is pretty much standard at any festival, what sets this apart is the competition atop the hill: Timber Sports. Challenges with axes, saws, log-rolling and power equipment pay tribute to the timber industry that has driven the local economy for well over a century. Once described as events that allowed those who work in the forests during the week for a paycheck to compete on the weekend for pride, these sports have expanded to include 4-H teams (Winn taking the honors Saturday over rivals Vernon and Rapides), and college teams Stephen F. Austin and Louisiana Tech, to take part with muscle-powered tools only. The high-powered saw competitions are reserved for the professional competitors.

The Louisiana Forest Festival was created and funded through a 1948 act of the legislature under the governorship of Earl K. Long and ran until the 1960’s when the state funding dried up. But when a group of local citizens discovered that the charter was still active, the festival was brought back to Winnfield in 1980, now operating on sponsorships and self-generated monies.

Some years have seen clouds, rains, even damaging storms. Some have seen heat a little too high for confort. But Saturday was ideal. A good time for reflecting on family, life in a small rural community and on the primary industry that supports it.


WWII Vet: Thomas Taylor

Thomas Taylor, then and in 2012

(Bob Holeman conducted this series of interviews with local World War II in 2011-12. Most of those 34 American heroes have passed away in the decade since).

By Bob Holeman

It can be a little confusing when your name could be either a first or last name. It’s even tougher when both names are like that. Thomas Lewis Taylor had dealt with three for all of his 87 years.

To his family, he’s Lewis. He generally goes by Thomas L. Taylor. But to the U.S. Army back in World War II, he was simply Taylor.

Born July 5, 1924, in the small Winn community of Henton (Urania Camp), Taylor began his education in the one-room Henton School. Alice Henton was his first teacher and she had five or six classes, he recalls. When his father inherited some land around Shady Grove, not far from Flat Creek, they moved and built a home there. He began riding a school bus to attend Sikes High School.

It was a big school back then, he said, with maybe 500 students in its 11 grades and had some good sports teams. “But we didn’t have the transportation to compete with other schools,” he said, “so mostly we played each other.” He liked baseball best. Asked about his grades, Taylor confessed that “we missed a lot of school. Dad grew cotton as a cash crop and we had cows and horses as well. School wasn’t as important as farming was then.”

When the United States entered World War II, Taylor was still in high school. But his family was impacted by Pearl Harbor. “I had a first cousin, Harvey Taylor, who was injured at Pearl Harbor. It was a pretty serious head injury. He returned home but died a couple of years later. After that, I knew I had to go to war.”

Sure enough, as soon as he graduated in the Sikes Class of ’43, Taylor joined the Army. “They were glad to get some of us who had a little bit of education.” He went to Fort Sill in Lawton, OK, for basic training and still recalls looking over the old haunts of Apache Indian chief Geronimo. It was at Fort Sill that he also received some specialized training with the 105mm howitzer.

Taylor’s unit then headed to the San Francisco Bay area where they stayed until being shipped out for Pacific action. “This was the first big city I’d ever seen,” he said. “Those skyscrapers were something else to a country boy.” When the soldiers were loaded onto a ship and headed out to sea, “they didn’t tell us where we were going. We ended up in New Guinea and we waited.”

The Winn local did not like New Guinea at all. “Those people looked about wild. The women wore grass skirts.” (Fortunately, the men were friendly to the Allied soldiers. He described some of the brutal treatment meted out by the natives against Japanese invaders). Taylor stayed in New Guinea for a couple of months, working and unloading ships.

“We were finally attached to the 24th Division as a replacement unit. We sailed to Leyte Island in the Philippines. I got to watch McArthur step out on the beach from a long way off. You know, ‘I shall return.’ But that was after we’d cleared out the island for him. In the 24th Division, 52nd Field Artillery Artillery, I was a cannoneer to start with, then a gunner on a 105. I shot a lot of rounds on that. It’s not a big gun but had a range of nearly 7 miles. But most of the time, we were shooting almost on the level so it didn’t go that far.”

He said he saw a lot of action during his time and managed to come through “without a scratch. There are a lot of islands in the Philippines and since we were attached to an infantry unit, we followed close to them as they went from island to island, clearing out the Japanese. Sometimes they’d break through our lines and someone had to stop them. We took several more islands, then Mindanao. We got a few of days of R&R there, then they told us to get prepared for the invasion of Japan. But the war ended before that happened.”

So instead of participating in the invasion of Japan, Taylor was part of the occupational forces that landed there following the end of hostilities. He was assigned to duty in Fukuoka in southern Japan where American troops managed groups of Japanese who began the task of cleaning up the area. “It was kind of funny…when I first landed, I ran into my cousin and best friend, Harold Thornton. He was operating some heavy equipment, filling in holes.”

Six months into the occupation, Taylor had accumulated enough points to come home. Perhaps due to the anticipation, the long voyage back to the United States “seemed like forever,” he mused. “It probably took 10 to 15 days.” He made it, though, and once discharged came directly back to north Louisiana.

“Me and another boy who’d been in the Marines, Alton Boyett, got a job cutting pulpwood. But it didn’t take us long to figure out that it was easier in the Army so we both re-enlisted…in the same unit I’d served in Japan. I had a pretty good job, breaking down rations for distribution to the troops. I started early and was finished by mid-morning. Then I’d have the rest of the day off.”

This life of ease didn’t last long. “Korea broke out,” he explained. “It wasn’t a war, they said. They called it a Police Action. In fact, I didn’t have anything but a .45 when we flew in and you could hear bullets hitting the airplane. Since we were already in Japan, we were the first ones there. I didn’t like it a bit. They called it ‘Police Duty’ but they sure missed that one.”
Taylor was an ammunition supply sergeant. The good luck that had held him safely through his first war ran out in Korea. He was traveling in an ammunition truck when it hit a landmine. “When the truck was blown up, I got my eardrum burst.” He was shipped back to El Paso for hospitalization and treatment.

“Even with my bad hearing, the Army wasn’t ready to give up on me. It’s hard to find someone you can depend on. They wanted me to stay on as a desk sergeant. But I was trained for combat.” So he left military service and returned to Winn. The veteran had a bronze star for his service in both World War II and Korea. And now, a “DV” designation on his license plate.

Life would be different. “I’d always had a squirrel dog. But now when he treed a squirrel, I couldn’t find him because I couldn’t tell where the barking was coming from.” He said he received a little pension from the Army then got a call from Jim Anderson for a job selling used cars in Olla. “I did that for him for a while, then ran it after he died. I sold cars until I retired.”

The romance in Taylor’s story began when he was home between the wars. “One day, I took my grandmother, Dottie Hatten, to a homecoming at the Pine Hill Church cemetery.”

His wife, Mollie Kees Taylor, takes over the story at this point. “I was pretty young at that time. I was sitting there in a car with a friend, Gloria Jo Holmes, when they drove up. I said, ‘See that boy in the colored shirt over there? I’m going to marry him. He’s good looking.’ Well, she rolled down the window and hollered, ‘Hey, someone over here wants to meet you.’ I shrank down in my seat to hide. Another time, he came by our house with my brother, Floyd. He joked later that I was reading a ‘Funny Book.’ The book was ‘funny’ because I was holding it upside down while I was pretending to read it. I’d peek around the pages once in a while to look across the room at Lewis. My brother warned me, ‘leave him alone…he’s a heartbreaker’.”

She didn’t heed the caution. The two corresponded when he went to Japan and then Korea. They married Sept. 14, 1952. Initially, they lived with his parents until he got the good job in Olla and they moved there. The couple would have five sons and two daughters. They now have 12 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren. When their home in Olla was destroyed by fire, they were able to move into the camp home that they’d previously built on family property near his childhood home.


Goldonna News: April 26, 2023

Goldonna Elementary Junior School Lady Wildcats and Wildcats will be hosting an Athletic Banquet on May 5th at 6:00pm. It will be held in the school gym and the public is invited to attend. The cost of $10 will cover a delicious meal that will be served during the banquet. Please RSVP to Sandi Smith Lee at 318-581-5444.

The Natchitoches Parish School Board Member for District 7, Chad Fredieu, would like to extend a personal invitation to the Athletic Banquet.

“I hope to see our community on May 5th at this great event honoring our student athletes. I also would like to say a big THANK YOU to the Goldonna Elementary faculty, staff, volunteers, and parents involved in making this event happen for our children. Please, if you are in attendance thank those involved and don’t hesitate to introduce yourself if you see me. I would love to get to know all of you. Go Wildcats!.”

The school has also announced Kindergarten Graduation will be held on May 22, 2023 at 9:00am and the 8th grade Graduation will be held at 6:00pm. 

The Christmas in the Park Committee is teaming up with Winnfield Assembly of God to bring you the best Fish Fry that Winn and Natchitoches Parish has ever seen. All proceeds will benefit their youth group and the Christmas in the Park. Plates are $10 each. It will start at 10:30 and go until 7:00pm on April 30th. Please contact Eugene Garner for tickets and possible deliveries for orders of 10 or more.

The Natchitoches Area Fire District 2 will be holding a fundraiser on June 10, 2023. They will be hosting their First Annual Poker Run. The poker run will cover miles and miles of scenic terrain with several check points along the way where participants will draw playing cards, to build their poker hand. Prizes will be awarded for the top three hands and there will be door prizes as well as a “Split the Pot”. Complimentary water will be available at every checkpoint. There will be a Fried Fish Lunch available for the low cost of $10 per plate. Non-participants will be allowed to purchase meals too. The ride begins at 8:00am and concludes at 5:00pm at the final drawing spot in Goldonna. You must be 21 years or older to participate in the Poker Game. 

All proceeds will benefit the Volunteer Fire Department and their tireless efforts in keeping the community safe. You can pre-register for $20 from now until June 3rd. After that the fee will be $30. 

For more information you can contact Candace Smith (318-471-0704), Mason Rachal (318-471-8636), or Rachel Chesser (318-663-2964)

Goldonna Baptist Church is laying the groundwork to have the biggest year of Operation Christmas Child that the Goldonna community has ever seen. Pastor Dupree recently announced the following donation schedule:

 

March  Toothbrushes & floss

April  Toys (cards, dominos, jump ropes, small musical instruments, matchbox cars

May  Hard plastic cups, bowls, utensils

June  Sewing kits and multi tools

July  School supplies, pencil cases, notebooks, crayons, coloring books

August  Hats/caps, tshirts, undies, socks

September  Wipes, makeup, hair clips, maxi-pads, solid deodorant

October  Christmas Stockings, Christmas Cards

November  Packing Party

The Village of Goldonna is a beautiful town with the most thoughtful, loving and kind residents. If you would like to highlight a community member please reach out to me. I know there are many gems just waiting to shine.  

 If you have news to include please email Reba Phelps at jreba.phelps@gmail.com


Shrimp & White Bean Stew

Clearly this was a recipe I would not pass up. I adapted this from a Louisiana Cookin’ recipe. It was light and rich all at the same time. I highly recommend buying fresh shrimp for this. You will be glad you did!

If you can soak beans overnight or all day before time to make supper, you can make this! I also made Half Baked Harvest’s 5 Ingredient Beer Bread to go with it (and topped with our favorite homemade strawberry jam). SO SO GOOD. Meals like this make me feel like life is together even when it most definitely is not!

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
2 tablespoons butter, divided
4 slices bacon, diced
1 pound fresh peeled large shrimp
1 heaping tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoon kosher salt, divided
1/4 cup butter
1 bunch green onions, diced
1 pound dry white beans, soaked overnight and drained
6 cups chicken broth
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Directions

Soak beans overnight. Drain.

In a large Dutch oven heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat. Add bacon and cook, stirring until crispy. Remove from pot.

In a large bowl toss together the shrimp, garlic, lemon zest, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and remaining 1 tablespoon oil and 1 tablespoon butter. Increase heat to medium-high and add shrimp to pot. Cook 3 minutes until pink. Remove from pot.

In the same pot add 1/4 cup butter. Add green onion, cooking until soft. Stir in beans, broth, and remaining salt. Increase heat to boiling. Reduce heat, cover and simmer until beans are tender but not falling apart, about 30-45 minutes.

Stir in parsley and lemon juice. Return bacon and shrimp to the pot. Heat on low for 5 minutes.

*Recipe adapted from Louisiana Cookin’.

Ashley Madden Rowton is a wife, mom and published cookbook author who lives in Minden, La.


There’s more to the story this Library Week

We called it the “lie-ba-rare-ry” or “lie-berry” but of course it’s properly The Library, and on this National Library Week we honor the place where each of us, in our hometowns and school houses, spent a large part of our formative years in this glorious building that held more fact and fiction than you could digest in a dozen lifetimes.

The Writer’s Almanac reminds me that the Library of Congress, or “Gramps” as all the other libraries call it, was founded this week in 1800. Had 964 books and nine maps. 

Today, it’s a bit of a different ballgame, and if you work there, you best buckle your chinstrap. The Library of Congress has more than 17 million books now, plus recordings and art and lots of maps (like, way more than the original nine) and gets 15,000 new items each workday. They’ve got books like Hamlet had the crazies.

Speaking of, maybe the Library of Congress’s birth is why we celebrate this final week of April as National Library Week, but maybe it’s because the Bard of Avon and pretty good hand, William Shakespeare, is thought to have been born April 23, 1564, and for certain died on the same date, 52 years later, I forswear. He’s considered our greatest English dramatist and was also clever in the sonnet game:

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Except for that one time you were mean to me

And I thought, “What the heck; I’ll go ahead and scorn.”

He was a handful, ol’ William was.

So when you go by your local library branch this week, maybe tip your cap to this magical place, a joint that has plenty for kids of all ages, a place that connects the community and shares internet for job seekers and self-educators, a rest stop for movie night and craft night and poetry readings, if such is your thing.

And books. If you haven’t read or listened to one lately, here are a few I’ve finished so far this year, and brief reviews, just to rattle your cage and get you to thinking.

Amor Towles was an investments pro in Manhattan for 20 years, writing on the side, and is now a fulltime novelist and thank goodness. He is a wizard of time and place, a handy vocabulary but not high-falutin’, and tremendous with characters. My favorite of his three books is A Gentleman in Moscow, about an aristocrat sentenced to life in a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin in 1920, soon to be a Showtime/Paramount series starring Ewan McGregor as Count Alexander Rostov, now one of my favorite fictional people.

The Lincoln Highway is about four boys in 1954 who mean to go to San Francisco and end up in New York, and Rules of Civility stars a wonderful female character, Katey Kontent, a normal girl thrown into high society in post-depression New York City. Doesn’t sound like much, but I wish I could read each of them again for the first time.

Did not enjoy Ghost Story by Peter Straub, although it was a hit when released in 1979 and the movie (Fred Astaire and some other biggies were in it) was good, which is why I wanted to read it. Mistake.

Did not like The Haunting of Hill House, 1959, from Shirley Jackson (she wrote the short story The Lottery that we all read in high school). I wish Hill House had been only a short story.

And didn’t enjoy Fahrenheit 451, the 1953 classic by Ray Bradbury. It’s about banning books and so in the current climate, I thought I’d catch up. Instead, I wish I’d have banned myself from reading it. No doubt it was timely, though, 70 years ago.

More fiction I did like was Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, speaking of catching up, as this is the Stephen King short story, more of a novella, that the movie is based on. The movie is better but the story, of justice and hope and friendship and humanity, is just so good.

Stoner by John Williams didn’t get a lot of raves in 1965 when released but it is beautifully written “academic” or “campus” novel about a farm boy who becomes an English professor and comes to terms with a life that didn’t go as he’d planned. And why I’ve felt recently like reading novels 60 years old is a mystery even to my own personal self.

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt (2022) starring a talking octopus named Marcellus (or at least he shares his thoughts) is about how we are better together, whether we have two arms or whether we have eight.

Out of room, so, suggested non-fiction I’ve read this year, and would recommend each, depending on your interests.

The Storyteller’s Nashville by Tom T. Hall, if you like Tom T. Hall.

Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story, by Rick Bragg, if you like Jerry Lee Lewis or are just interested in a fellow Louisianan.

Killer Triggers and I Will Find You, by Joe Kenda, the Colorado detective who became famous through TV’s Homicide Hunters. If you’re a fan, you might prefer the audio versions; he narrates them.

Something Wonderful: Rogers and Hammerstein by Todd Purdum; this bureau has a fascination with musical theatre.

On Writing by Stephen King. His wife pulled the draft of Carrie out of the trash and suggested he keep trying so …

And finally, enjoyed To Wake the Giant, Pearl Harbor historical fiction by Jeff Shaara, a longtime pro in the war arena, and Unsinkable, which is not fiction but is the real thing about five men aboard the World War II destroyer USS Plunkett, and especially their “problem” that day at Anzio. Studs.

Happy reading or listening, and happy National Library Week. Got anything to share?

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu or Twitter @MamaLuvsManning


Winnfield Police Department Arrest Report

Date: 4-21-23
Name: Abel O Moya 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: Hispanic 
Sex: Male 
Age: 32
Charge: Failure to appear 

Date: 4-24-23
Name: Stormy L Jones 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: White 
Sex: Female 
Age: 30
Charge: Failure to appear 

Date: 4-25-23
Name: Zephaniah J Davis 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: Black 
Sex: Male 
Age: 33
Charge: Simple battery, Drug paraphernalia, Resisting an officer 

 

This information has been provided by a law enforcement agency as public information. Persons named or shown in photographs or video as suspects in a criminal investigation, or arrested and charged with a crime, have not been convicted of any criminal offense and are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.


Notice of Death – April 25, 2023

Genita Marie (Moore) Leone
June 29, 1943 — April 20, 2023
Service: Saturday, April 29 at 11 am at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Natchitoches

Elouise Mitchell Hebert
October 19, 1938 — April 24, 2023
Service: Friday April 28 at 2 pm at Rocky Mount Methodist Church

Elizabeth Perot
December 19, 1937 — April 23, 2023
Service: Wednesday, April 26 at 11 am at The Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Campti

Barbara D. Hicks
April 21, 2023
Arrangements TBA

Sindera White
September 19, 1954 – April 20, 2023
Arrangements TBA

Steven “Cal” Nelson
December 13, 1980 – April 17, 2023
Service: Saturday April 29 at 1 pm in the Winnfield Memorial Funeral Home Chapel, located at 318 North Street in Natchitoches


Second arrest made in Camp murder case

Winn Parish Sheriff Cranford Jordan announced Thursday evening the arrest of a 42-year-old Winnfield woman related to the shooting death of Calvin High School agriculture teacher and softball coach Chad Camp last Saturday night.

Jessica M. Shea, whose address was cited as 661 Ed Carpenter Road of Winnfield, was arrested Thursday afternoon at 6:05 by WPSO deputies, said Jordan in a news release.

She was charged with one count of obstruction of justice and four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile.

Shea was housed in the Winn Parish Detention Center and no bond was set Thursday evening.

Jordan’s statement said “this arrest was in relation to the death of Kevin Chad Camp on 4-15-2023.”

Camp’s 17-year-old son, Andrew, was arrested that night and charged with manslaughter. He remains in custody, with no bond, and he will be tried as an adult.

Jordan called the shooting death a result of “a family situation.”  He said manslaughter is the appropriate charge in this case. Louisiana law says manslaughter applies to a homicide committed in “sudden passion or heat of blood immediately caused by provocation sufficient to deprive an average person of self-control and cool reflection.”

Coach Camp led Calvin to two consecutive Class C state softball championships in 2021 and 2022 after a state runner-up finish in 2019. The Covid pandemic canceled the 2020 season.

The team won its first-round playoff game at home Monday afternoon but was defeated on Tuesday and eliminated from the playoffs.

Camp was also well known regionally as Calvin High’s Future Farmers of America advisor.


Tigerettes’ softball plays at home Saturday in state quarterfinals; Calvin baseball home also

File Photo

Winnfield Senior High School pulled off a 12-inning second-round playoff triumph Wednesday night at South Beauregard and will host an LHSAA Non-Select Division III quarterfinal game Saturday afternoon at 4 against Doyle.

WSHS rolled by Mansfield 10-0 in the first round at home, then the 11th-seeded Tigerettes prevailed 3-2 in 12 innings Wednesday evening at No. 6 South Beauregard. Madison Nelson slugged a home run in the top of the 12th to make the difference for Winnfield.

Doyle, seeded third in the playoff bracket, had a first-round bye, then won at home 6-2 over No. 19 Jewel Sumner to reach the quarterfinals. Since a bye counts as a home game, Winnfield had one less home contest in the playoffs and gets to play Saturday at Brandi Parker Field at WSHS.

The winner will reach the state tournament next weekend in Sulphur and will face the survivor of No. 2 Kaplan vs. No. 7 Loreauville.

In the baseball playoffs, Calvin is at home Saturday at 1 against Holden in Non-Select Division V. The winner will play second-seeded South Beauregard next week.

The Winnfield Tigers got a first-round bye and will play host to a playoff series next week in Division III Non-Select.


Winn Parish Sheriff’s Office Arrest Report

Date: 4-14-23
Name: Sharon R Craig 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: Black 
Sex: Female 
Age: 55
Charge: Simple assualt, warrant (Nachitoches Parish)

Date: 4-15-23
Name: Paul W Garsee
Address: Columbia, LA
Race: White
Sex: Male 
Age: 36
Charge: Failure to appear, warrant (Caldwell Parish)

Date:  4-17-23
Name: Stephen Beauchamp 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: White 
Sex: Male 
Age: 44
Charge: Disturbing the peace 

Date: 4-17-23
Name: Andrew D Smith 
Address: Winnfield, LA 
Race: Black 
Sex: Male 
Age: 39
Charge: Aggravated assualt of a dating partner, Aggravated assualt 

Date: 4-18-23 
Name: Michael Rison 
Address: Winnfield, LA
Race: White 
Sex: Male 
Age: 24  
Charge: Unauthorized removal/use of vehicle 

Date: 4-20-23
Name: Robert M Holden Jr
Address: Winnfield, LA 
Race: Black
Sex: Male 
Age: 32
Charge: Domestic abuse, Aggravated assualt 

 

This information has been provided by a law enforcement agency as public information. Persons named or shown in photographs or video as suspects in a criminal investigation, or arrested and charged with a crime, have not been convicted of any criminal offense and are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.


WSHS softball plays today, Calvin girls halted; Calvin, WSHS baseball get playoff plans

SEASON ENDED: The Calvin girls softball team was knocked out of the state playoffs Tuesday at Stanley. (Photo by KEVIN SHANNAHAN, Journal Services)

The Winnfield Senior High softball team goes to South Beauregard for a second-round LHSAA playoff game today at 5:30, while the Calvin softball team’s season has been ended.

The TIgerettes blasted Mansfield at home Monday 10-0 in five innings in a first-round Non-Select Division III game.

Calvin’s girls had a stirring 13-3 homefield victory Monday over Castor, but fell on the road in the second round Tuesday, 16-10 at seventh-seeded Stanley, ending hopes for a third straight state championship.

The LHSAA announced its baseball playoff brackets Tuesday.

The Winnfield Tigers got a first-round bye in the Non-Select Division III bracket. They will play a three-game series at home next week (dates to be determined, between April 25-29) against the winner of the first-round series this weekend between No. 9 Westlake and No. 24 Church Point.

Calvin’s 12th-seeded Bulldogs open the Non-Select Division V playoffs at home Saturday at 1, hosting No. 21 Holden. The winner will go to second-seeded South Beauregard next week in the second round.

Divisions IV and V have retained the single-elimination brackets used previously while Divisions I, II and III are now playing three-game series in the first three rounds leading to the semifinals.