Dakota Theriot, 21, was arrested Sunday in Virginia in the slaying of five people Saturday in Louisiana, including his parents, girlfriend, her brother and father, authorities said. Photo courtesy
Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office/Facebook
Jan. 27 (UPI) -- A suspect in the killing of five people Saturday in Louisiana was arrested at his grandmother's home about 1,000 miles away in Virginia, authorities said Sunday morning.
Dakota Theriot, 21, is accused of killing his girlfriend Summer Ernest, 20, as well as her father, Billy Ernest, 43, and her brother Tanner Ernest, 17, at their mobile home in Livingston Parish just outside Walker on Saturday. Theriot then allegedly killed his parents, Elizabeth Theriot and Keith Theriot, both 50, in Gonzales in Ascension Parish.
Theriot was located in Warsaw, Va., and arrested by the Richmond County Sheriff's Office, the two Louisiana sheriff's offices posted on Facebook. The adjacent parishes are about 70 miles west of New Orleans.
At 8 a.m. Eastern, Theriot was armed as he arrived in the driveway of his grandmother's home where he was met by two deputies and arrested without incident, Richmond County Sheriff Stephan Smith told The Advocate in Baton Rouge.
Fearing her grandson might come to her home in Warsaw, she and other families had spent the night in a motel. And the woman asked authorities to check her home Sunday morning to make sure it was safe before she went back.
"He seemed tired, had a little bit of sleep deprivation, and there were some statements made, but at this time that's part of the investigation," Smith said.
Theriot will be transported back to Ascension Parish and booked on two counts of first-degree murder, home invasion and illegal use of weapons, according to a posting by the parish sheriff's office on Facebook.
Authorities originally believed Theriot might be heading to Mississippi in a 2004 Dodge Ram pickup truck, which they confirmed was stolen from the Ernest family.
"This is probably one of the worst domestic violence incidents I've seen in quite a while," Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webre said during a news conference Saturday. "For a young man to walk into a bedroom and kill his mother and his father, and then kill friends in Livingston that he had a connection with."
At around 9 a.m. Central, deputies with the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office were sent to a trailer park in reference to a homicide of three people. The Ernests' neighbor Charlenne Bordelon told The Advocate the two youngest children, 7 and 1, in the Ernest family escaped to her home.
Bordelon said Billy Ernest's wife and the children's mother was at work during the shooting.
P.J. Hays, an Ernest family relative, said Saturday that Theriot and Summer Ernest had just begun dating.
"He'd only been in the picture with Summer about two weeks, the family just met him for the first time last weekend at a family birthday party," Hayes told The Advocate.
Authorities said Theriot had been kicked out of his parents' home.
Later about 25 miles south, authorities in Ascension Parish found one person dead and a man in critical condition in their bedroom. Webre said Keith Theriot identified his son as the shooter before he died Saturday.
