PIERRE PART — It’s a risk law enforcement officers face every day when they put on their uniform and go to work: being shot on the job. They know it could happen, but hope it never does. But on October 16, it became a reality of Assumption Parish Sheriff Leland Falcon. For the first time in his 44-year law enforcement career, he was shot in the line of duty.
Sheriff Falcon just sat down to talk about how the shooting played out and how he’s recovering on the latest episode of UWK’s Podcast, Louisiana Unfiltered.
Initial response
On the day of the shooting, Sheriff Falcon was meeting with a constituent and got a phone call around three o’clock from his chief deputy about someone threatening to shoot another person. He was near the location of the incident, so he left the meeting to respond. “It’s not unusual for me to stop in if I’m near a scene or if there’s an event going on,” the sheriff said.
Once on the scene, Sheriff Falcon met up with the responding deputy, and they found a victim. “At that point, we discovered the victim had been shot,” Sheriff Falcon recalled. “He had hidden in an SUV. We checked on him. He was trying to exit the vehicle. He was directed to get back in the vehicle and stay there.”
Next, a woman came out of a house and said the suspect was next door. The sheriff and a responding deputy saw a man sitting outside in a desk chair with a shotgun across his lap. “At that point we decided we’re going to approach from different angles,” the sheriff said.
The house they responded to has a wooden fence around the backyard. The deputy went around the back of the fence to approach between two houses, while the sheriff went through the backyard, expecting to go through the gate.
What he didn’t know was that the gate would potentially save his life.
Shots fired
As the sheriff and deputy approached, they told the suspect, later identified as Paul Blanchard Jr., to put his weapon, a double barrel shotgun, down. “After a little while, he raised the gun and discharged it toward me,” Sheriff Falcon said. The deputy immediately returned fire, striking Blanchard, who dropped his gun.
Sheriff Falcon was hit by Blanchard’s discharge. The scene could have played out very differently had it not been for the fence gate. “I opened the gate, but I didn’t sling the gate open. I opened it and I was standing there,” he said. “When he threw the gun up, I actually pushed the gate, so the gate took the majority of the shot from the blast.”
The sheriff said he’s confident Blanchard was going to take another shot at him, but the deputy reacted quickly enough that Blanchard couldn’t fire a second shot.
In the moment, Sheriff Falcon said he wasn’t even thinking about the fact that he’d been hit. “Actually nothing. You’re in the moment, the adrenaline zone, and you’re reacting to it. You really don’t think about it till after,” he recalled.
The aftermath
The first thing the sheriff did after the shooting was call his wife. “I told her, ‘Look. You’re gonna hear, I got shot. Yes, it’s true. But I’m ok. You’re talking to me,'” he recalled. “When you tell them that, of course they’re worried.”
Falcon said he had to stress to his loved ones that he was okay. “That’s probably the part that bothers me the most, is like trying to tell them, ‘I’m good, I’m okay, I’m fine.’ The first thing that came out was, ‘Sheriff got shot.’ That’s how it comes out. So trying to get a hold of family and making sure that they understand that everything’s in a good place.”
He said he made sure that the deputy called his family to make sure they knew he was okay, too, and that the news came from him and not a third party.
“I think my wife, Laura, was more of a nervous wreck than anybody, until she actually physically met with us,” he said.
Sheriff Falcon was grazed by the bullet on his left side. “I did go to the emergency room that night for an x-ray,” he said. “It was too deep for them to pull out and not worth going in. More damage could be done. So it’s still there. It’ll stay there.”
LSP investigation
Louisiana State Police is investigating the October shooting. LSP found that the initial victim in the case was cutting the grass at his family member’s home, when Blanchard allegedly yelled some racial slurs at him, and then shot him. When Sheriff Falcon and his deputy responded, Blanchard reportedly shot Falcon, and the deputy on the scene immediately shot Blanchard.
Blanchard was seriously injured and rushed to the hospital. “He was in intensive care for a while. Upon being there, we worked with state police to be able to book him. It is kind of unusual, but we did a booking at the hospital so that when he was released he was immediately transferred to a state facility.”
Blanchard is now in jail, facing two counts of attempted first degree murder, hate crimes, aggravated assault on a police officer, aggravated assault with a firearm, and aggravated burglary.
Sheriff Falcon is the one who requested an LSP investigation. “I just felt that it was best that they come in, take over the entire investigation,” he said. “Those folks really did a very good job. There was a tremendous response, a lot of boots on the ground.”
“There were a lot of interviews that needed to be conducted, and they’ve really worked hard in bringing it to a resolution and getting a warrant.”
Looking back
When Sheriff Falcon thinks about how everything played out on October 16, he wouldn’t have changed anything. “You always run things back through your head, and I don’t think I’d change it,” he said. “A big part of it is the end result. And the end result is for everybody to go home and recover.”
When he thinks about that being the goal, the day was an overall success. “I have a family that was in the house, and all of them are safe. The victim that was shot is recovering. He will be, from what I understand, okay. I obviously recovered,” Falcon said. “And quite frankly, Blanchard’s recovering. Of course, he has a long legal process to deal with.”
Despite the events that transpired, Falcon doesn’t have any harsh words for Blanchard. “I’m glad for his family that he is okay,” he said. Falcon does have a question for him, though. “What brought him to this point to do that? What triggered this on that day? There’s only one person that can tell you that, and that’s him.”
For now, it’s a waiting game to see how everything plays out. “You can’t rush an investigation. It does not serve the victim or the perpetrator.”
Falcon is grateful for everyone in Assumption Parish who checked in after the shooting. “We got so many messages and phone calls, not only for the deputy, but for myself and the office,” he said. “It was a tremendous amount of support, and we couldn’t ask for anything better. Obviously, somebody was looking over all of us that day.”
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