Resident captures blaze on cameras
The Dupont family was asleep around midnight Friday, Aug. 21 in Ormond, when they heard a noise and went back to sleep thinking it was nothing.
It wasn’t until morning when Ricky Dupont went outside and saw the damage to his truck parked in the driveway on Longview Street.
Soon after, he got a text on his cell phone with video from that night, as well as information from a witness and more video from surveillance cameras at Dupont’s residence.
The video opens with a dark scene with two teens, apparently male, walking down the street across Dupont’s neighbor’s yard to his residence. In the right corner of the video, a fire is lit and can be seen being tossed and then explodes into a large plume of fire that lasts several minutes. The teens are then seen running from the scene beyond view of the cameras.
According to Dupont, the teens blew up something explosive near his truck, which he estimated caused $1,300 in damage.“My concern is that explosion could have ignited the truck’s gas tank,” he said. “It’s obvious to me … why would someone walk by the truck and fire something off if they didn’t intend to do damage.”
Dupont also said he is worried the two will return to do more damage, especially when one of the suspects lives in his community and drives past his house daily.
St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office spokesman Capt. Pat Yoes said detectives are working the case, but are asking the public for more information.
“We developed a person of interest, but are still investigating,” Yoes said. “The video footage is of poor quality so we are not able to make out identifiable features.”
There was a witness driving on the street near the time of the incident, but that witness was unable to identify the suspect fleeing from the area.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was called to the scene and indicated the device fired to be “consumer grade pyrotechnics” or fireworks.
While no arrests have been made, Dupont is concerned about what’s happening in his community.
They’re more watchful and particularly so when a week earlier mailboxes were destroyed in the area. Again, he said his surveillance cameras filmed a teen with a baseball bat in a moving vehicle passing in front his house.
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