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One year ago, Craig Parro died at the hands of police officers. Authorities say it was self-defense, but Parro's mother thinks he could have been spared.

BALDWIN - As Craig Parro lay inside of his mobile home in Charenton on June 27 last year, a steady stream of pepper spray seeped in through an open window. Outside, two Baldwin police officers waiting for the spray to flush him out. The officers were five miles outside of their jurisdiction, but they had two warrants for Parro's arrest and were determined that the walls of a trailer wouldn't prevent them from getting their man.

Officer Joel Honse, armed with a 9mm Beretta equipped with a laser-sighted device, stood on the western side of the trailer. His partner, reserve officer Ronald Pinell Jr., armed with a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic, stood on the eastern side.

Although they would later tell investigators that they were "just going out there to see if he was there," the officers brought bolt cutters to the scene and shut off the home's electricity.

A state police investigation cleared the officers of any criminal wrongdoing, but the details in that report, including statements of the officers, pain a disturbing picture of what went on in the night of June 27.

Parro was wanted for attempted first-degree murder and armed robbery. It should have been a routine arrest. It was anything but.

A 'policemen's pet'

The 45-year-old Parro was notorious in the small communities of Baldwin and Charenton. He had kept police busy with a rap sheet that included at least 37 arrests or violations dating back to 1983.

St. Mary Parish Sheriff David Naquin said he was unsure of exactly how many times Parro had been arrested, but "I will say that the law enforcement community was very familiar with Mr. Parro."

He had been arrested on charges that ranged from driving under the influence and forging a prescription to theft and simple burglary.

Gert Parro said she had heard her son referred to as the "policemen's pet," which meant that when they were bored, they always knew they could stop and pick on him.

In November 2003, Parro was even arrested for stealing from her after she found out he had been charging liquor and cigarettes to her account at a local grocery market in Baldwin.

She said she never made excuses for her son's actions, but he didn't have an easy life.

In his teens, Parro suffered a back injury that required surgery and a lot of medication, she said. In his mid-20s, Parro was involved in a motorcycle accident and lost his right foot. In his 30s, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and a complication from surgery left him confined to a wheelchair for at least two years.

Parro's mother said she was not surprised when she heard that police were looking for her son last year.

But she was surprised at the charges. Police accused Craig Parro of stabbing a man in the neck during a June 17 fight at T. Willie's Lounge in Baldwin and then stealing $400 from the register.

The setting

During the week after the bar fight, Baldwin Police Chief Gerald Minor secured arrest warrants for Craig Parro and ordered regular patrols of his home in Charenton.

He even tried to have Honse and Pinell deputized by St. Mary Parish Sheriff David Naquin. Naquin denied the request.

"We just chose in this case not to," he said.

Despite this, Minor continued to send patrols out to Parro's home. Sometimes his officers went with the assistance of the Sheriff's Office. Sometimes they went on their own.

Craig Parro lived in a mobile home off of La. 87, deep within 30 acres of land on Parro Estates. The trailer sits beneath the branches of two old growth live oaks and stood a 100 yards away from the banks of the Bayou Teche. It was a home surrounded by farmland and cow pastures.

It sat six miles away from the Baldwin police station and five miles outside of their jurisdiction.

Baldwin officers had made the trip up to three times a day after the stabbings.

On June 26, Minor and Sgt. Pete Armstrong stopped by the mobile home and noticed signs of activity. Minor said he called the Sheriff's Office and had two deputies dispatched to the scene. He then called a judge with the 16th Judicial District in an effort to get a verbal order to enter the residence, but was denied. The district attorney's office told him that he should back off until he could get a search warrant.

Minor said it was his "fullest intentions" to get a search warrant on June 28.

'Flush him out'

The following account of the June 27 attempt to arrest Craig Parro is based on a report filed by State Police and obtained by The Daily Advertiser.

At around 3 p.m., Honse said he and Chief Minor decided to make another pass by Parro's trailer to check for any signs of activity.

Once they arrived, Honse said he walked to the edge of the trailer and shut off the power to Parro's home.

On the ride back to the station, Honse said he and the chief discussed using a chemical agent inside of Parro's home to "get some movement inside." Honse told Minor that he had a can of pepper spray with a nozzle on it, but lacked a plastic hose to inject it into Parro's home. Minor told him to check the local emergency room for some.

At 6:03 p.m. Honse went to the Franklin Foundation Hospital and picked up some used oxygen tubing from the emergency room.

Sometime after 8:30 p.m., Honse and Pinell went to Parro's home. Pinell said on the way, there was no plan of action discussed, since they were only going to check things out.

When they arrived, Honse knocked on Parro's door and identified the two of them as Baldwin officers. They noticed Parro had turned the electricity back on since their last visit.

Honse called Minor to update him and Minor instructed Honse to use the spray. Honse said he turned the power off again and sprayed it through the vent and the back window.

Honse said he then stood up on an ice chest near the back window and looked in and saw Parro's "peg leg," referring to Parro's prosthetic foot, lying on a chair inside.

Afterward, Honse said he and Pinell loudly stated that they were leaving. However, instead of leaving, they parked the car near a set of cattle guards located about 200 yards away from the home and then snuck back on foot.

The shooting

The officers split up on either side of the trailer, Honse said, hoping that Parro would come outside to turn the power back on.

Shortly after positioning himself, Honse heard the front door open and the sound of a puppy barking. Honse stepped out from the side of the trailer, turned on his flashlight and announced his presence.

He saw Parro's head stick out of the doorway and then noticed Parro's left hand on the doorjamb. Honse told Parro to show him both of his hands "three to four times." Instead, Parro cursed him and then "pulled a chrome revolver out in his hidden right hand and pointed it at my head."

Honse said he was 25 to 30 feet from Parro at the time. All of a sudden, Pinell, who had been hiding out behind a tree, appeared from the back side of the trailer. Parro pointed his gun at Pinell. Honse then fired one shot at Parro's hand holding the gun. Parro disappeared into the home.

Seconds later, Honse said Parro, whose gun police would later learn had no bullets, re-emerged and trained the gun at Honse. Honse, with his gun still drawn and a small, red dot of light positioned on Parro's temple, fired again.

Honse said all he could see was the weapon and Parro's head, so he "took the only available shot I had to the head to stop the threat."

Fresh on the scene

As Trooper Hal Ribble, an investigator with the Louisiana State Police West District Detectives, approached the open back door he saw Parro's nude body laying face down in a large pool of blood on the floor.

Honse, who was still on the scene at the time, approached Ribble and told him that Parro had pointed a gun at both him and Pinell, so, he "had to put one between his running lights."

When Ribble walked through the open front door, he "was immediately overcome by a violent burning sensation in the eyes and throat." Ribble walked back outside and asked Honse if he had used any chemical agents inside. Honse told Ribble that he was "probably reacting to the previous discharge of his weapon."

The investigators later asked Baldwin Police Chief Gerald Minor if his officers had used any type of pepper spray or tear gas. Minor told the investigators that they had not.

Later, as the St. Mary Parish Coroner's Office removed Parro's body, Ribble noticed a silver revolver laying underneath Parro.

Police would later learn the gun was a .455 caliber British Bulldog revolver, which had been out of production since the 1920s. The gun had neither a serial number or bullets, save several pieces of silver duct tape that had been rolled up and shoved into the gun's cylinders to "simulate the presence of bullets."

Police also located bolt cutters in Honse's unit. Honse later told investigators that he took them from the Chitimacha Fire Department in the "even that Parro left his residence and locked himself in a barn that was adjacent to his residence."

However, in his statement to police, Pinell said Honse had used them to cut a padlock located on the breaker box outside of Parro's home.

Also, after three days of searching with a metal detector, investigators were unable to locate the shell casings from the two shots fired from Honse's weapon, which would have helped them to determine where Honse was standing when he fired the shots.

The state police concluded in their investigation that while the officers maintained that "their presence at the residence was only to determine if Parro was home, overt measures were used to ensure that if the residence was occupied, the inhabitant would be forced to exit."

The judgment

In the end, charges were never filed against the department or the officers involved because they were acting in self-defense, according to 16th Judicial District Attorney Phil Haney.

"These things are always tough because you've got a family of the guy who got killed, but let me just say this, the police didn't create the attempted murder and armed robbery. That was done by the defendant. The police did not tell the guy to come out with a drawn weapon."

Haney did say that the manner in which the police department handled the situation "could have been done a little better."

Both Chief Minor and Honse declined to comment for this story, but Minor did say that the investigation "speaks for itself."

Gert Parro agrees.

When she read the report months after the shooting, what she saw shocked her.

"I just feel like that, yes, Craig needed to be arrested, but he should not have been shot and killed.

"It's going to be a year on the 27th and it's like it happened yesterday. I have so much anger in me," she said.

"They just took matters into their own hands," she said.