Records: Aid sought

• By JAMES MINTON AND KIMBERLY VETTER
• Advocate staff writers
• Published: May 8, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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The man booked in the deaths of a Zachary woman and her 3-year-old son was the target of a paternity and child-support petition involving the woman’s 4-year-old daughter, court records show.

East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s investigators credit the girl, Lindsay Paige Johnson, with providing information that led to Tuesday’s arrests of Dominique Dantoni Smith and his girlfriend Trendall Lashel Matthews in the incident.

Smith, 28, of Wilson, and Matthews, 22, of Jackson, were booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on two counts each of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.

A notice that Smith had been served March 27 was filed in the West Feliciana Parish Clerk of Court’s office Monday, the day a BREC worker found the bodies of Jessica Johnson Palmer, 23, and her son, Juan Palmer Jr., at Doyle’s Bayou Park, 7801 Pride-Port Hudson Road near Zachary.

Two of Johnson’s other children — Lindsay and 7-month-old Robbyn Palmer — were left in the park overnight. The 4-year-old’s throat was slit, authorities have said. The infant was not injured.

Don Moreau with the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office said the mother and son died of exsanguination, or loss of blood.

Johnson Palmer filed the petition against Smith on Nov. 2, 2006, in the 20th Judicial District Court, court records in West Feliciana Parish show.

Sheriff’s deputies had tried to serve Smith with the paternity and child-support petition at addresses in Zachary and Brusly, court records show. An East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy eventually delivered the papers to Smith on March 27.

The petition alleges Johnson Palmer maintained a sexual relationship with Smith from January 2003 through April 2003. Lindsay was born on Nov. 18, 2003.

The petition asked the court to determine, through genetic testing, whether Smith is the child’s father and, if proven, to provide child support and medical insurance.

Smith, who gave a Wilson post office box as his address, answered the petition on April 3, 2006, demanding a DNA test and agreeing to pay for the child’s medical coverage if he is proven to be her father.

Smith said in his answer that he had sexual relations with Johnson “but was not aware of her being pregnant until much later.”

He said he left town at a time when Johnson had enlisted in the military and had taken several pregnancy tests that “were all negative at the time of my departure.”