re: Sloane Stephens has a major La. connection.

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It was that kind-hearted, generous person that Smith wanted her daughter to know. So when he made the effort to reconnect, she did not tell her daughter about his arrest in Missouri in 1994 on rape charges, for which he pleaded guilty and was placed on probation.

“I wanted her to have pride in him,” Smith said of Stephens, who had been working at a trucking company, adding, “I’m telling you, John was a very good man with addiction issues that were never addressed early on.”

Smith said her daughter was devastated when she found a story on the Internet about the 1994 arrest and another arrest, outside Shreveport in April, on charges of sexual assault. The charge was pending at the time of his death.

“She said, ‘Mom, why didn’t you tell me this?’ ” Smith said.

“It’s very sad,” she added, her eyes welling with tears, “because Sloane and her dad became so close. They had a great friendship. She knew a part of her dad that was all good and she was able to be proud of him.”

Stephens asked her mother if her father’s accident could have been a premeditated attempt to end his life. Reached by phone on Friday, Cindy Chadwick, a spokeswoman for the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office, said that investigators have ruled that out as a possibility. There were signs he overcorrected when his truck drifted off the road, Chadwick explained, adding that a similar accident had occurred along the same winding stretch earlier this year.

“She’s searching for answers,” Smith said. “I feel her pain. I look at her and I look in her eyes and I melt because I know how much he meant to her in these last few years.”

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