Staff Reporter

LAPLACE - A LaPlace woman was arrested and charged as an accessory to aggravated second degree battery when an unknown assailant attacked her husband with a blunt object- a man the husband claims was hired by his wife to kill him, according to reports from the St. John Sheriff's Office.

Earlier that morning Edward Watson Jr. had come home to the house he and his wife own, only to discover that she had changed the locks, and was inside with a man she later said was only her cousin. After alerting police, Deputy Ed Howell arrived on the scene, and ordered Watson's wife, Lashanti Watson, to let her husband inside. The couple was ordered to change the locks, so that they would both have access to the house. Approximately an hour later, as Edward Watson was kneeling before the door, changing the locks, an unidentified black male approached him and asked if “Shanti,” Watson's wife, lived there. After Watson confirmed that, the unidentified man began beating him on the back of the head with an unknown object. A few blows later, Watson says, the alleged hitman fled on foot.

When Howell arrived back on the scene, he found Edward Watson at a nearby intersection with a bloody left eye and swollen, bleeding lips. The two proceeded to the Watson residence, where his wife, reclining in the neighbors front lawn furniture, purported to have no idea her husband had been attacked. When asked if she knew what had happened, Howell said she replied, “No, but let me see him so I can laugh at him.”

Edward Watson drove himself to the hospital, under police protection.

Testifying before police he claimed that, while fixing the locks, he had overheard his wife ask her guest, Travis Stewart of LaPlace, for a phone number. He said he then heard her say, over the phone, “No, don't send him, he just got out of jail. Send someone else to come here and kill him.”

Shortly after 1 p.m., two deputies arrived at the Watson residence, and placed Lashanti Watson and her guest under arrest.