Man accused of 2017 rape and killing of 5-year-old NC girl tracked down in Louisiana

A suspect in the 2017 rape and killing of a North Carolina girl has been caught in southern Louisiana, authorities say.

David Wesley Prevatte, 23, was arrested Friday, Feb. 4, in the community of Bayou Blue, about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans, according to Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre.

Prevatte is wanted in connection with the death of 5-year-old Paitin Fields in Pender County, North Carolina, Webre said. Pender County is about 100 miles southeast of Raleigh.

Prevatte was Paitin’s uncle and has maintained his innocence, telling news outlets after he was named as a suspect in 2018 that he’d tried to help the girl after finding her “unresponsive and apparently seizing,” WECT reports.

She was bought to a Pender County hospital on Nov. 13, 2017, and died three days later, according to a Lafourche Parish news release.

“An autopsy showed signs of sexual trauma and strangulation,” officials said.

Prevatte went to prison in 2019 on unrelated charges of “intimidating a witness, breaking and entering, larceny, and burning a building,” Lafourche Parish officials said.

He was released in January 2020 and eventually tracked by the Pender County Sheriff’s Office to Bayou Blue.

“Through investigation, the Pender County Sheriff’s Office obtained an arrest warrant for Prevatte for first degree murder, first degree statutory rape, and statutory sex offense with child by adult,” Webre said in the release.

“He was booked into the Lafourche Parish Correctional Complex where he will remain awaiting extradition to Pender County.”

This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 9:26 AM with the headline "Man accused of 2017 rape and killing of 5-year-old NC girl tracked down in Louisiana."