East Baton Rouge passes 100 homicides for year; How did Burreaux the giraffe die?

The Advocate's Top Headlines

with Kelly P. Kissel | Metro editor

Baton Rouge has had six homicides in the past week, as Lea Skene reports here. The city is on a pace to break its annual homicide record for a second year in a row. With more than three months left in the year, the city is already past 100 killings.

Just as a trial was to open for a man accused of first-degree murder in the deaths of a Highland Road couple, it ended. A Florida man pleaded guilty to manslaughter in return for a 30-year prison term. A co-defendant still faces life in prison on two murder charges.

And necropsy results are in for Burreaux, the Baton Rouge Zoo giraffe that died mysteriously three weeks ago. The reason? Anaphylactic shock. The underlying cause? No one knows. There were no signs of COVID-19 or other illnesses. Here's our story.

Louisiana has been reunited with both of its moon rocks. During the Apollo years, states and nations were presented with lunar samples in a goodwill gesture and there was a time when neither the state's rocks could be found. The Advocate helped track down a rock from Apollo 11 back in 2018, and this week we learned that a Florida man returned an Apollo 17 rock to Louisiana.