Dondre Turner, a 24-year-old Black man from Houma, Louisiana, was spending New Year’s Eve 2016 in a part of town where the daylight fades early and the roads run close to the bayous. In the late afternoon of December 31, authorities were called to the area around Livas Lane and West Park Avenue after reports of gunfire and a vehicle that had gone off the roadway and ended up in a shallow bayou.
The scene suggested sudden chaos: shots fired, a crash, and a driver badly wounded.
Investigators determined Turner had been behind the wheel when he was shot during what deputies described as a suspected drug deal that went wrong. After the gunfire, a passerby intervened, getting Turner to Thibodaux Regional Medical Center. From there he was transferred to University Medical Center in New Orleans, where he was pronounced dead. As word traveled back to Terrebonne Parish, the case quickly shifted from emergency response to a hunt for the person responsible.
Deputies focused their investigation on a suspect identified as Jordan Cooks, a 29-year-old from the area. Authorities received information that Cooks had fled the scene and was in Thibodaux. Working with the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Thibodaux Police Department, investigators took him into custody shortly after midnight on January 1, 2017. He was booked into the Terrebonne Parish Jail and charged with first-degree murder. At the time the arrest was announced, officials said no bond had been set.
In the days that followed, Turner’s family prepared to lay him to rest, gathering for visitation and services in early January 2017 before burial in Halfway Cemetery. For those who knew him as “Dre,” the holiday that should have marked a new beginning instead became the boundary line between what life was and what it would never be again.
