Workplace Shooting Hearing Will Resume In December

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A state judge has given attorneys for a Slaughter man charged in the killing of two women in 2009 until Dec. 17 to decide whether mental disability will be part of his defense.

The Advocate reports that the order from state District Judge Tony Marabella came Friday at the end of a pretrial hearing for Richard Matthews.

Matthews is charged in the fatal shooting of two women and the wounding of a third in December 2009 at Grady Crawford Construction Co. where he once worked.

In January, at prosecutors' request, Marabella appointed doctors to determine whether Matthews could aid in his own defense. The judge last month found Matthews competent to assist his court-appointed lawyers. The doctors' examination had nothing to do with Matthews' sanity at the time of the deaths.