MAN IN WHEELCHAIR HOLDS OFF DEPUTIES SEARCHING FOR DRUGS

HOLDEN -A man confined to a wheelchair and armed with a gun held Livingston
Parish sheriff's deputies at bay for two hours Thursday morning after they
tried to search his home for drugs and stolen guns.

An eight-member Special Response Team entered the 36159 La. 441 home of
Jerry Schenk, 28, at 5:15 a.m., team Commander Jason Ard said. The team was
assisted by Baton Rouge city police.

"We knew it was going to be dangerous before we got here," Ard said.

Gunfire erupted shortly after the team members - shouting "Sheriff's
Office! Sheriff's Office!" - entered the three-bedroom, brown wood-frame
home about six miles north of U.S. 190.

The deputies returned fire and backed out of the home, uninjured, Ard said.

Inside the home were Schenk, his mother, Katie Schenk, 60, and his
girlfriend, Heather Mitchell, 18.

Katie Schenk said she was asleep when the deputies burst into her room.

"They told me, 'Just lay down and don't move,' " she said in an interview
outside the home shortly before noon Thursday.

She and Mitchell gave their version of what happened while sitting beyond
the yellow police tape surrounding the home. Inside, State Police searched
the home for drugs and weapons.

Katie Schenk said sheriff's deputies held a gun to her back while she lay
on her bedroom floor and then shoved her out the window when the shooting
began. "They didn't even identify themselves," she said.

Katie Schenk displayed bruises and scratches on her arms and legs, but said
she refused to go to the hospital for treatment.

Mitchell, who was not injured, said she had been in bed, asleep, with Jerry
Schenk.

"All of a sudden, they had bullets flying through the walls," Mitchell said.

She said Jerry Schenk grabbed a pistol that was on a couch in the bedroom
and started shooting at the floor to scare the deputies.

"He's not crazy," Mitchell said. "He's not a maniac. He stays in his room
most of the time. He never bothers nobody."

After taking cover, sheriff's deputies called for a negotiator, who spent
the next two hours persuading Jerry Schenk to surrender, Ard said.

Mitchell walked out of the house first, followed by Schenk in his
wheelchair, Ard said.

Jerry Schenk was taken to North Oaks Hospital in Hammond for treatment of a
foot injury before being transferred to the Livingston Parish Jail, said
Norris Hull, supervisor of deputies for the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office.

Deputies booked Schenk on eight counts of attempted first-degree murder,
illegal carrying of a weapon, possession of marijuana with intent to
distribute and possession of drug paraphernalia, Hull said.

Hull did not have information on the type of gun Schenk used or the amount
of marijuana investigators seized from the house.

Katie Schenk said Jerry Schenk, one of her four children, suffers from
cerebral palsy and is unemployed. Katie Schenk, who is widowed and
unemployed, lives in the tin-roofed house with Jerry Schenk and Mitchell,
also unemployed.

The 59-year-old house sits on a three-acre plot with two inoperable pickup
trucks flanking both entrances of the curved, gravel driveway.

"It ain't nothing fancy on the inside," Katie Schenk said. "It's just poor
people living here."