The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office has arrested three people on murder charges after investigators determine that a body found in Florida is that of a man killed in Lacombe earlier this week.
The sheriff’s office says on Tuesday detectives with the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Major Crimes Unit recovered the body of an unidentified man from a waterway in their jurisdiction in Florida. Investigators there learned that the body found was identified as a resident of Lacombe, Louisiana.
The Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office notified the St. Tammany Sheriff’s Office and in a joint investigation between the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office and St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, detectives were able to establish two suspects, Patrick McCarty and Jason James both of Lacombe, as well as a potential location of the homicide at a residence in the 60000 block of Williams Drive in Lacombe. The men were found and arrested and are now in police custody.
Through their investigation, detectives learned the men beat the victim at the Williams Drive residence and then transported his body to Florida, where they dumped it in a waterway in a remote area of Santa Rosa County.
It was also learned the men attempted to hide the crime by destroying evidence.
Investigators say a 17-year-old Slidell male was also present and participated in the incident. He too was also taken into custody.
McCarty and James were booked into the St. Tammany Parish Correctional Center for Second-degree Murder and Obstruction of Justice. The juvenile was booked into the Florida Parishes Juvenile Detention Center on the same two charges.
