What would you do, if a school teacher you trust, kidnapped and molested your child? Will you take justice into your own hands or will you let the law have its way.
Well, this is exactly what happened back in 1984 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Gary Plauche was a Louisiana dad who had sent his son, Jody Plauche to learn karate.
Jody was ten years old and his karate teacher was a 25-year-old man called Jeff Doucet. There isn’t a lot of information about Doucet’s background but he’d been abused as a child.
Doucet spent most of his days with children as a karate teacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and had the complete trust of most of the kids’ parents. However, no one knew he was a child abuser.
It started when he was teaching karate to his students and soon, he began having a special interest in the young Jody. Doucet would touch him inappropriately when he was teaching him karate, but to the kid, he never thought his teacher had other intentions.
In February 1984, Doucet kidnapped Jody and took him to a motel in California where he sexually abused and molested him. Police searched everywhere for Jody, and he was eventually found after Doucet allowed the boy to place a call to his mother from the motel. California police raided the motel and arrested Doucet.
On March 16, 1984, Doucet was flown back from California to Baton Rouge to face trial. Doucet arrived and was led in handcuffs by police officers through the airport at around 9:30 p.m.
Gary Plauche had gotten info from a local TV employee that Doucet would be brought to Baton Rouge for trial and the exact time. As Doucet was escorted through the airport, he passed the news crew who were taping the scene. He then walked past Plauché, who took out his gun and fired a single shot, directly at the right side of Doucet’s head, at point-blank range.
Doucet immediately fell to the floor, bleeding from a wound close to his right ear. As depicted in the video below, Plauché placed the telephone receiver down before officers restrained him and removed the gun from his other hand, and then attended to Doucet.
Officers grabbed hold of Plauché and recognized who he was at once. They kept him pinned against the bank of telephones, asking him as captured on camera, “Gary, why? Why, Gary?.”
The news of this incident spread throughout Louisiana and America as a whole. A lot of people agreed with the shooting as a justification for the victim’s actions. When interviewed by a local TV channel, an airport bartender said;
“I’d a shot him, too, if he done what they say he done to my boys, he’s no killer. He’s a father who done it out of love for his child, and for his pride”
Gary Plauché was initially charged with second-degree murder but agreed to a plea bargain in which he pleaded no contest to manslaughter. He was sentenced to seven years suspended, with five years’ probation and 300 hours of community service, which he completed in 1989.
Plauché suffered a stroke and died in 2014 at age 68.
Sources: theadvocate.com, allthatsinteresting.com
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