Man abused wife before Friday’s slayings

The third murder-suicide in two weeks in East Baton Rouge Parish claimed the life of a 35-year-old woman before her ex-husband fatally shot himself early Friday.

Rouche Coleman, 38, broke into 35-year-old Kesia Coleman’s home at 2850 Magazine Drive at 4 a.m. Friday and shot her, the woman’s son and himself, said East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Casey Rayborn Hicks.

Deputies received a call at 4 a.m. from a woman at the Magazine Drive home who told them someone was trying to enter her home, Hicks said.

During the phone call, authorities heard gunshots and the woman on the phone stopped responding, Hicks said.

When deputies arrived at the house, they found Kesia Coleman and Rouche Coleman dead, Hicks said.

Kesia Coleman’s son was also shot and was transported to a hospital with serious injuries, Hicks said.

A younger son was with relatives at the time, Hicks said. Court records show the younger son to be 3.

The Sheriff’s Office hasn’t released the age of the older son who was shot but a neighbor reported he was about 11.

Officials with the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office said Friday that they investigated three complaints from Kesia Coleman while she lived there, but made no arrests.

In the first case, which was reported in April 2011, Kesia Coleman said she returned to her home at 22470 Windsor Court in Denham Springs to find it had been burglarized, said Chief of Operations Perry Rushing.

She reported a new television valued at $2,000 had been stolen, but there were no signs of forced entry and all windows were locked, Rushing said.

In March, she reported someone had cut the front and rear brake lines on her 2007 BMW while it was parked in her closed garage, Rushing said.

She said she got a call the same day from a blocked number from her ex-husband asking if she was still alive, according to the report by the investigating deputy, Rushing said.

The deputy “could clearly see the lines had been cut with an unknown sharp object,” Rushing said.

Coleman called the Sheriff’s Office again, on April 15, and reported that “someone had poured bleach all over her bedroom,” Rushing said.

She told the deputy she had had trouble with her former husband, Rushing said.

He said the deputy gathered evidence from the scene and turned it over to the detectives’ office, where the cases remained open as of Friday morning.

Chief Criminal Deputy Jason Ard said deputies appeared to have done all they could in cases that apparently involved community property.

Had Kesia Coleman obtained a restraining order, deputies might have had cause to put Rouche Coleman in jail, Ard said.

“That’s why they are so important,” Ard said of restraining orders. They aren’t “just pieces of paper.”

Just days after the April 15 incident, Kesia Coleman filed a petition of protection from abuse in East Baton Rouge Parish Family Court. In that petition, Kesia Coleman said Rouche Coleman had “constantly been stalking me and doing evil things to me.”

Kesia Coleman said in the document that Rouche Coleman had been “constantly breaking into my residence in Livingston Parish” as well as cut the brake lines on her car.

Kesia Coleman received a temporary restraining order April 18 that required her former husband to stay away from her home and from Scotlandville Elementary School, where Kesia Coleman was a teacher.

She was scheduled to go to court about the order on May 2, the day the temporary restraining order was set to expire, but instead dismissed it on May 1, according to Jennifer Browning, judicial assistant with Judge Pam Baker in Family Court.

According to divorce records, the couple was marred in Chesapeake, Va., in 2006, moved to Louisiana and were separated around June 2010, Browning said court records show. The divorce was granted in August 2011.

Scott Perrilloux, district attorney for the 21st Judicial District, said the only case they have handled involving Rouche Coleman was a traffic ticket issued in Tangipahoa Parish.

This is the third murder-suicide in the parish in the past two weeks.

On May 28, Reagan Rowe, 26, was shot by her stepfather, David Robinson, outside his home at 3166 Cedarcrest Ave. following an argument with Rowe’s mother. Robinson, 57, then turned the gun on himself.

On June 1, Allison Brue, 31, died from injures she suffered in a May 29 shooting at 4043 Tuscarora St. Authorities say Brue was shot by her boyfriend, 27-year-old Benny Johnson, who then fatally shot himself.