By Matt Davis, The Lens staff writer |

The District Attorney’s Office in Jefferson Parish has dropped all charges against a jailhouse sergeant at the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office booked in April with domestic abuse battery and aggravated assault.

Sgt. William Holmes was arrested at his home April 9 after his wife called 911 and later told police that he threatened her with a handgun in front of their three small children.

Holmes told the Jefferson deputy who responded that his wife, June Holmes, was the aggressor. Both were listed as victims and suspects on the resulting report, and prosecutors couldn’t decide who was culpable.

“The charges were refused because there was insufficient evidence to determine which of the parties was the primary aggressor and which was acting in self defense,” said Margaret Hay, a spokeswoman for Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick.

A spokesman for Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman did not respond to questions asking whether Holmes is back at work.

Holmes and his wife offered differing accounts of a domestic dispute at their home to Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Deputy Eric Blandford, who arrived on the scene after separate phone calls from the couple.

In his report, Blandford said June Holmes described her husband calling her “vulgar names” and then pointing a handgun at her. She locked herself in the bathroom, but her husband kicked down the door, grabbed her by the back of the neck and ripped off her wig, she told Blandford. June Holmes then said she defended herself by dousing her husband with pepper spray, the report says.

She said her husband then ran out and hid his gun in his truck, according to the report.

William Holmes told the investigator that his wife threatened him with a kitchen knife during a verbal argument and pepper sprayed him in the face without provocation, the report says. Holmes denied kicking in the bathroom door and denied having a gun during the altercation.

Blandford’s report says he saw a “large black foot print on the outside” of the bathroom door.

Neither Holmes nor his wife could be reached for comment.