Tagged: Louisiana State Police

The Crescent City Connection Police Department has been transferred to Louisiana State Police as part of a restructuring of the bridge police division.

The state Department of Transportation and Development says the police department's administrative transfer to the Department of Public Safety was effective Monday.

Officials say the New Orleans-based bridge police officers will continue wearing their current uniforms and using their current marked vehicles until midnight Dec. 31. At that time, the officers will get new DPS uniforms and vehicles.

A Louisiana State Police lieutenant was injured while getting out of his marked SUV on Interstate 10.

Trooper Melissa Matey says Lt. Robert Hodges was struck Saturday when a driver swerved onto the right shoulder in an apparent effort to avoid upcoming slowed traffic.

Hodges is being treated at East Jefferson General Hospital.

Matey says 20-year-old McCaskill, of Donaldsonville, was driving a car in the left lane of the highway. Troopers say traffic in front of McCaskill began to slow down, and he swerved into the right lane and right shoulder.

State police say two people died and a third was critically burned when a tractor-trailer ran off of Interstate 12, hit some trees, jack-knifed and was engulfed in flames. All three were trapped in the cab.

Trooper Nick Manale says the St. Tammany Parish Coroner's Office is working to identify the dead.

Manale says witnesses rescued one passenger after the 2010 Freightliner drifted off the road about 11 a.m. Wednesday west of the exit to Lacombe. But he says intense flames kept them from reaching two other adults.

Authorities say two people died and a third was injured when an 18-wheeler in which they were riding ran off Interstate 12 near Lacombe, struck a tree and caught fire.

State police tell The Times-Picayune the injured person was taken to the Interim LSU Public Hospital in New Orleans with serious injuries.

Identities of the victims were not immediately released.

The tractor-trailer rig ran off the highway's eastbound lanes near the Lacombe exit in St. Tammany Parish.