Boy, 11, had metal rod lodged in his skull. ‘I can tell you evil walks among us.’
An Ohio woman arrested on a first-degree murder charge is accused of slowly beating to death her 11-year-old son in a Laurel hotel room, Laurel Police Chief Tommy Cox said.
Latina Marie Oates, 33, of Columbus, Ohio, allegedly beat her son with a five-pound metal rod that was found lodged in his skull, the Laurel Leader reported after attended a bond hearing for the woman.
The child’s two brothers allegedly witnessed the deadly beating.
A housekeeper at the Hampton Inn on Jones Street in Laurel found the body of the the woman’s son, Joshua, in a the bathroom of a third-floor room at the hotel shortly before noon Tuesday, Cox told the Sun Herald.
“When we got there, the child was already dead,” Cox said. “It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever seen. I can tell you evil walks among us.”
The boy died of blunt force trauma. An autopsy is pending at the Mississippi State Medical Center in Jackson to determine the cause of death.
After the discovery, Cox said, authorities learned of Oates’ two other children, ages 9 and 6, who were traveling with her.
Video surveillance captured images of Oates with three children before Joshua’s body was discovered. She could later be seen leaving the hotel for the last time with her two other sons.
Louisiana State Police issued an Amber Alert to be on the lookout for Oates who was in a white Toyota Camry with an Ohio license plate and traveling with her two other children.
“We wanted to find those children,” he said. “We had high hopes we would find them in good condition.”
An assortment of local, state and federal law enforcement officials from Mississippi, Louisiana and Ohio were among those who assisted in the quick response to arrest the woman and take custody of her two other sons.
By Wednesday, authorities got a tip that led them to a home in New Orleans, where authorities found Oates and her two sons in the car parked in a driveway of a home. Oates didn’t know the people who lived there, Cox said.
The two children were safe and taken into protective custody, and Oates was arrested on a charge of first-degree murder in her eldest son’s death.
Oates waived extradition from New Orleans and was returned to Mississippi, where she is being held at the Jones County jail.
A judge denied her bond after the District Attorney’s Office shared details of the alleged crime.
The Laurel police police chief extended his thanks to the various task force of law enforcement agencies who came together to find Oates and ensure the safety of her two surviving children.
The two other children were interviewed by officials with child protective services in Louisiana after they were found. What they told officials is not public, but could possibly be used in the case against their mother.
Authorities, Cox said, got in touch with relatives of the children and they are expected to come to Louisiana in hopes of returning them to a safe home in Ohio.
Cox applauded the staff at Hampton Inn in Laurel for assisting police with any of their needs, including providing video surveillance footage from the hotel.
Oates, he said, had checked into the hotel on Saturday.
“The staff at the Hampton Inn bent over backward to assist us,” Cox said, adding the hotel is not a problem place in the city.
“We never get calls for service there,” he said. “We don’t want to harm them or their business or their employees just because this lady happened to pick this particular hotel to do this horrible thing.”
This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 11:22 AM.
