The fourth of five people accused of breaking into the shuttered LAlumina LLC complex in Ascension Parish last May took a plea deal this week from prosecutors that avoided jail time.
The bauxite ore processing complex shut down operations following layoffs during the first year of the COVID pandemic in 2020. It has operated with a skeleton staff since then, company officials have said previously.
The plant's ownership came under fire from its residential neighbors in the Burnside area south of Gonzales in the years since the shutdown over the company's failure to control swirling dust from waste "red mud" tailings ponds surrounding the Mississippi River plant, as LAlumina's environmental permits require.
Ascension Parish government officials say they are working with state regulators to try to control the dust as the operation, which once employed a little more than 300 people, currently has just one person on-site.
Red mud dust leaves the LAlumina waste pile on April 7, 2022, during a northwest wind, as photographed by a state Department of Environmental Quality inspector responding to complaints.Â
At the time of the break-ins last year, sheriff's reports indicate at least some additional employees were still working at the plant but not enough to halt illegal entry into the complex off La. 22.
Erica Cockerham, 35, was one of four people caught on surveillance cameras inside the refinery in the Darrow/Burnside area the evening of May 22. Investigators believe they were gathering tools and materials inside the largely vacant plant to steal, according to court papers.
Investigators linked one of the people with Cockerham on May 22 with another refinery break-in three days earlier with different suspects that did result in the burglaries of tools and copper wire, arrest warrants allege.
Cockerham, currently of Walker and formerly of St. Francisville, wasn't involved in the earlier break-in, deputies found.
On May 22, some in the group appear to have cut through a perimeter fence. Arriving deputies found a hole cut at the northeast gate, with a car and three-wheeled bicycle parked nearby along with a pair of bolt cutters, a warrant affidavit says.
Deputies then spotted, at a distance, one of the suspects in the area of metal storage containers inside the complex but were unable to find any of the suspects once they gave chase, the affidavit says.
Investigators later concluded the four people at the plant had "been collecting items, and staging them around the vacant buildings in the plant, to possibly be retrieved later," an arrest affidavit says.
"Due to the large scale of the plant, and most of the buildings being vacant, it is unknown if any property (had) been taken," deputies added in the affidavit.
A day after the May 22 break-in, investigating deputies found stolen tools, copper wire and welding supplies from LAlumina at a St. Amant home, where a fifth suspect in the break-ins, Charles "Bobby" Jones, lived.
The three others who were with Cockerham on May 22 at LAlumina, Eugene Helg, 45; Natalie Gremillion, 32; and Clifton Thames, 33, lived down Laurel Ridge Road from Jones in St. Amant at the time.
Thames, who was Cockerham's boyfriend, admitted being a part of the earlier break-in and burglaries on May 19 with Jones and another man, according to court papers.
All four involved in the May 22 break-in denied to deputies that they had taken anything from LAlumina, and prosecutors ended up not pursuing convictions for burglary against them.
Assistant District Attorney Brant Mayer said investigators don't believe the group was able to get away with any stolen equipment that time because the suspects were "seen too quickly."
"But I feel like they were setting it up to burglarize it," he said.
Prosecutors did pursue burglary counts against Thames and Jones for the May 19 break-in.
In late January, Thames admitted to burglary on May 19 and illegally entering critical infrastructure on May 22. He has been given five years in state prison, according to plea deals.
Jones, 41, is still facing burglary counts. He has pleaded not guilty.
As the two others accused in the May 22 break-in, Gremillion and Helg, did in December, Erica Cockerham admitted on Tuesday to illegally entering a site deemed to be critical infrastructure and received a suspended jail sentence with three years probation.
