Pubdate: Sat, 13 Aug 2005
Source: Advocate, The (LA)
Copyright: 2005 The Advocate, Capital City Press
Contact: http://www.2theadvocate.com/help/letter2editor.shtml
Website: http://www.theadvocate.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2
Author: Sonya Kimbrell
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids)

EX-CLASSMATE OF DEVAI'S RECALLS SMART, WITTY PERSON

A former classmate remembers a smart and quiet but witty young man in
Gergely Garry Devai, who police say shot and killed Detective Terry
Melancon, 31, and wounded detectives Dennis Smith, 41, and Neal Noel,
35. The narcotics officers were attempting to search Devai's Capital
Heights duplex Wednesday because police suspected he was selling marijuana.

Devai started shooting after Melancon and the others entered his
duplex, police have said. At least one officer returned fire, and
Devai was hit twice in the abdomen and once in the arm. East Baton
Rouge Parish Coroner Shannon Cooper said an autopsy performed Thursday
showed Devai bled to death from the two gunshot wounds in his abdomen.
"Sometimes people with these kinds of injuries you can save, but more
frequently you can't," Cooper said. "There are  a lot of things that
can be damaged in the abdomen."

Police and witnesses said Devai was arrested and handcuffed shortly
after the shooting and held in the front yard of his duplex until he
was taken by ambulance to Baton Rouge General Medical Center-Mid City.
He died at the hospital about an hour later, said Sgt. Don Kelly, a
spokesman for the Baton Rouge Police Department. Devai's body was
cremated Friday, said Don Moreau, chief of operations for the East
Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office. Moreau said Devai's mother
released his remains to the Coroner's Office as an indigent because
she was unable to pay for a burial.

Cremation is the method the Coroner's Office uses to handle indigent
cases. Devai's ashes will be returned to his next-of-kin next week,
Moreau said. Nobody answered the door Friday at the address listed as
the home of Devai's parents. Police said Thursday that during a search
of Devai's duplex they found 72 marijuana plants, 60 plastic bags
filled with marijuana ready to sell, scales and other drug paraphernalia,
cash and two guns

"He was never a problem. He was the kind of guy who sat in the back of the
classroom and made straight A's. Everybody liked him," said Rosana Sotile
Weaver of Leesville who attended both McKinley Middle School and Baton Rouge
Magnet High School with Devai. Records found in The Advocate archives show
that Devai, who was usually called Garry, was a TIP scholar in 1993. TIP,
Duke University's Talent Identification Program, honors outstanding
seventh-grade students.

It identifies students in 16 states who have scored in the top 3
percent on either the SAT or ACT college entrance exams. Devai,
formerly of Debrecen, Hungary, apparently moved to Baton Rouge more
than a decade ago when his father joined the faculty at LSU. Weaver
remembers that Devai spoke English with a Hungarian accent when he
first started school with her in the sixth grade. "By the time we
graduated, he had lost the accent almost completely. You could only
hear it with a couple of words," Weaver said. Devai and Weaver both
graduated high school in 1998. The 1997 Baton Rouge High yearbook
shows that, as a junior, Devai belonged to the chess club and was a
member of the student government association. His senior year he was
in the National Honor Society, the International Cultural Awareness
Club and the Junior Classical League. He earned a degree in business
from LSU in 2003, and records show he also attended New York
University. Weaver said she still ran into Devai occasionally when
they both attended LSU, and the two worked together as pages at the
Bluebonnet Branch Library in 2000 and 2001. Bluebonnet librarian Kay
Yerger said a page's duty is to shelve books.

There is a huge turnover among the page staff, but she said she
recognized Devai's name in news reports about the shootings.

However, she said, she remembers little about him. "He was a quiet
boy. It's tragic," Yerger said. Weaver said she saw Devai smoke
marijuana while they were both students at LSU, but his drug use
didn't seem to be more than experimental. "He had a reputation for
being kind of a pothead, but nothing that would have ever made him
resort to this kind of violence," she said. "This is just really
shocking." The Advocate found no prior narcotics convictions for Devai
in a search of East Baton Rouge Parish records, though he was facing a
misdemeanor after being accused of brandishing a weapon nearly a year
ago. A neighbor, Mike Brady, has said that Devai seemed like a "nice
guy" and that he seemed devoted to his dogs. East Baton Rouge Parish
Animal Control took five dogs belonging to Devai on Wednesday,
Director Hilton Cole said. The dogs were released to the custody of
Animal Control by Devai's mother on Friday, Cole said. There are two
female Rottweilers, one male Labrador mix and two Lab-mix puppies.
Cole said one of the adult Rottweilers appears to be the mother of the
puppies that are roughly 3 months old. "Right now, they appear
healthy," Cole said. "The adults aren't particularly friendly but
anytime you bring an animal into a shelter there is an adjustment." He
said the puppies seem to be clear of parvovirus, an acute inflammation
of the intestines, which is often fatal to puppies and kittens. The
puppies are being housed together in a cage with other puppies.

The adult dogs seemed intimidated and subdued and one shows almost no
body language. None barked when approached. "They're without their
master," Cole said. They'll feed the puppies and dogs for several days
and then will check their temperaments to see if they are adoptable,
he said. Cole said in situations such as these, it's difficult to know
whether the animals were bred and trained to be aggressive. And
although he doesn't want to malign a breed, Cole said, it's a fact
that he sees many Rottweilers -- along with pit bulls -- seized after
drug busts. They are "drug dogs," he said, meaning that drug dealers
often acquire these dogs for their natural tendencies and train them
to be mean and aggressive. "It's pretty sobering to make a decision
like this because we realize the animals are innocent, but we don't
know how they were trained.

We'll just wait. It depends on the dogs," Cole said.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin