New Orleans: Authorities in Louisiana said they are searching for an ‘armed and dangerous’ 21-year-old accused of killing his parents and three others in two separate but related shootings Saturday.
Authorities informed that Dakota Theriot first shot and killed three people — the woman believed to be his girlfriend, her brother and father — in Livingston Parish before taking her father’s truck, driving to neighboring Ascension Parish where he shot and killed his parents.
“We are totally focused on finding him. We’re following every lead that we come up with,” said Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard during an evening news conference streamed online.
Theriot was being sought on first-degree murder and other charges. He was believed to be driving a stolen 2004 Dodge Ram pickup, gray and silver in colour.
Authorities have identified the victims as Billy Ernest, 43; Tanner Ernest, 17; and Summer Ernest, 20. Ard said Summer and Theriot were in a relationship and that Theriot had been living with her family for a few weeks. The other two killed are Theriot’s parents — Keith, 50, and Elizabeth Theriot, 50. They were shot in their trailer, Saturday morning.
“The father was gravely injured at the time we found him and has since passed away,” said Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webre. But before he died, Webre said authorities were able to get a ‘dying declaration from him, and only enough information to let us know that it was his son that committed this act’.
Webre said there were indications that Theriot was travelling east and maybe was in another state by now. “We’re going to work every lead. We’re going to follow every tip,” he said during the evening news conference. “We do not have a motive. It is still undetermined,” he added.
Crystal DeYoung, Billy’s sister, told this agency that she believes Theriot had just started dating her niece, Summer.
“My family met him last weekend at a birthday party and didn’t get good vibes from him,” DeYoung said. She said she wasn’t sure how her niece and Theriot met, but that she believed the relationship was relatively new.
AP
