On Wednesday of last week, a mother and her daughter were chased into a Henderson business parking lot and shot through the windshield of their car.
The mother died, and the daughter is recovering from gunshot wounds.
The accused, Gage Quebedeaux, was booked with first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and violation of a protective order. In a Friday hearing, a judge denied him bond on the murder charge, and set a $1 million bond on the attempted murder charge.
But it's not the first time he's been accused of violating a protective order designed to keep him away from the daughter - and every other time, he did get bond. In fact, he bonded out of jail on October 27, just days before the shooting.
KATC Investigates found that Quebedeaux has been arrested multiple times since the grandmother of his child first filed a protective order against him in 2019 - when he and the baby's mother were both teens. It was that grandmother, identified by family as Kalin Cormier, who died last Wednesday. Her family says she died shielding her daughter from the bullets.
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We reached out to her family; they're not ready to talk. We reached out to the attorney on Quebedeaux's court record, and we're waiting to hear back.
Court records show Quebedeaux was arrested on October 23 and booked with second-degree battery and violation of a protective order by simple assault. That arrest happened after Cormier called deputies because she was worried that Quebedeaux was hurting her daughter.
The deputy found her daughter at the home of Quebedeaux's mother with two black eyes and a laceration under one eye. Quebedeaux wasn't there, but his mother and father were, and the deputy had to take the victim into another room before she would tell him what happened. She told the deputy she had tried to get her clothes from Quebedeaux's house because she was leaving, but when she heard someone trying to get in the home she saw it was him and ran out the back door.
She said Quebedeaux chased her down, and she called her mother for help.
But he caught up with her, she said, and he "began to swing at her, punching her in both eyes several times." Then his mother drove her vehicle into the back yard and Quebedeaux forced the victim into the vehicle, which his mother drove to her home. That's where the victim "began to clean the blood from her face when Gage put both of his arms around her neck and took her to the ground," the victim told deputies.
Quebedeaux's mother called his father, who came and got Quebedeaux to leave. After talking to the victim, the deputy located Quebedeaux, who told him that the victim had tripped in the backyard, and because she has "low iron" that fall caused her to have two black eyes and a cut.
"After looking at Gage's hands/knuckles I observed his knuckles to be red, with a small cut," the deputy wrote. "From my previous law enforcement experience, when someone has red knuckles with a cut it usually means that the person had been punching on something or someone."
The deputy said the victim was taken to the hospital to get stitches in the cut on her face, and he took Quebedeaux to jail and booked him with second-degree battery, as well as violation of the protective order.
On October 26 a "Gwen's Law" hearing was held, during which 16th Judicial District Judge Lewis H. Pitman Jr. heard argument from the prosecutor and Quebedeaux's attorney, read the deputy's affidavit, saw Quebedeaux's arrest record and saw photographs of the victim's face. He then set Quebedeaux's bond at $151,000. Records at the St. Martin Parish jail show that bond was posted and Quebedeaux was released on October 27. The shooting incident happened a few days later, on the morning of November 1.
Gwen's Law was passed in 2014 and requires that an automatic "contradictory" bail hearing is held in domestic violence cases. At that hearing prosecutors present evidence and the judge decides if the accused should stay in jail, without bond, because the victim is in danger. The law allows the judge to hold the accused abuser in jail without bond for up to five days.
We reached out to Pitman to see if he had any comment, but he told us he's prohibited by the court's code of ethics from making any statement.
Court records show that the District Attorney's office objected to the October 26 setting of the bond - and following the slaying filed a motion to revoke it.
Last week's shooting came after years of protective orders being granted and dismissed, and multiple arrests; public records offer a glimpse of what appears to be a complicated, volatile relationship.
Court records show that Kalin Cormier first filed a protective order against Quebedeaux in November 2019, just a few days after he was arrested on October 30, 2019 for domestic abuse battery.
The most recent protective order was issued in July and is in place until June 2024.
In the request for the first protective order in 2019, Cormier said Quebedeaux, then 17, was the father of her three-month-old grandchild. She said he had slapped, choked and shoved her daughter, while the baby was there, and held her down. Her daughter wrote that Quebedeaux "saw something on my phone that he didn't like," and got mad.
She locked herself in her room, but he got in anyway, put the baby on her bed and started shoving her and hit her in the face. She picked up the crying baby, and he tried to take the baby out of her arms, the daughter wrote.
"Gage then pushed me onto my bed and choked me, and then pushed me to the floor," she wrote. "I got up and Gage pushed me back onto my bed and choked me to the point where I couldn't tell him to stop."
The victim grabbed his hair and bit his face to get him off her, she wrote.
The request Cormier made of the court was to order Quebedeaux stay away from the mother of his child, including her home and SLCC, where she was going to school.
A day later, Quebedeaux's father, Jason Quebedeaux, filed a protective order on his son's behalf, alleging that the victim was abusive toward his son, in particular keeping his keys and his phone, slapping him and jumping in front of his truck when he tried to leave. He said the story she told was a "total lie!!!" This filing also requested that the court order her to stay away from Quebedeaux at his home.
The court set a hearing, which was held about 10 days afterward. After the hearing, the court granted Cormier's motion, and put the order in place for 18 months. The only exception would be to allow supervised visitation with their daughter, court records show. Quebedeaux was ordered to pay court costs, and his father's protective order was dismissed because "it failed to prove" the allegations in the request, the records show.
The following year, in June 2020, the victim filed a request to dissolve the protective order.
"The defendant is my child's father, and I feel like I should be able to go straight to him about things that concern her, and vice versa. We should be adults about the situation," she wrote. The court granted that dismissal, records show.
Three months later, Quebedeaux was booked with domestic abuse aggravated assault, trespassing and simple criminal damage to property. The victim in that case is a man who has the same last name as Quebedeaux's mother. It later was dismissed by the prosecutors.
In October 2020, Quebedeaux was arrested for intimidating, impeding or injuring a witness and simple criminal damage to property. The victim in that case is the man who has the same last name as Quebedeaux's mother. This case also was later dismissed by prosecutors.
But another charge from October 2020, of unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling, is set for arraignment this month. The victim in that case was Cormier.
Also that month, on October 22, 2020, Cormier again filed for a protective order on Quebedeaux.
She said that her daughter has a child with Quebedeaux and that they "are in an abusive relationship."
She wrote that she had obtained a protective order in the past, but her daughter was violating it so she had it lifted. Her daughter, she wrote, was 17 years old and was being "severely physically abused" by Quebedeaux.
Cormier wrote that her daughter "refuses to leave Gage." She said she's afraid her grandchild will be hurt because the fighting happens around her. She said the child was now living with her and the great-grandmother, and that the young parents had been ordered by "DCFS to take a drug screen."
DCFS is the Department of Children and Family Services, which is the state agency that handles cases of alleged child abuse and neglect.
"In the past two years there has been bruises, in the last five months there has been bruises, black eyes and strangle marks around her neck with (the baby) present," Cormier wrote. Cormier wrote that Quebedeaux drives a pick-up - the same one he was driving the day of the incident in which Cormier died - and that he is known to carry guns and has a history of using or abusing drugs or alcohol.
That protective order was granted, and ordered to last until the daughter reached the age of majority.
In December 2020, he was arrested and booked with domestic abuse battery. In this case, Quebedeaux pleaded guilty to an amended charge of simple battery and was fined $115.
There's no record at the courthouse of any arrests in 2021 or 2022.
But records show that this year there were repeated arrests, starting in June 2023:
On June 4, Quebedeaux was arrested and booked with theft of a firearm and domestic abuse battery. That case is set for trial in December. The victim in this case is the mother of his child. His bond was set by Judge Suzanne De Mahy at $2,500 which he posted and he was released.
On June 21, he was accused of violating the protective order. That case also is set for trial in December. The victim in this case is the mother of his child. His bond was set by De Mahy at $2,000 which he posted and he was released.
On July 2, he was accused of two counts violation of the protective order; that case is set for trial in December. The victim in this case is the mother of his child. His bond was set by De Mahy at $2,000 which he posted and he was released.
On July 3, he was accused of 12 counts violation of the protective order. That case also is set for trial in December. The victim in this case is the mother of his child. His bond for this case was set by Judge Anthony Thibodeaux at $12,000 which he posted and he was released.
It was in July that the mother of his child filed for the protective order that was in place when the shooting happened, and remains in place until next year.
