BATON ROUGE — The East Baton Rouge Coroner’s Office has just confirmed that DNA is a match between the human remains found at the landfill in East Baton Rouge Parish and missing 15-year-old Ja’Derrius Minnieweather.
It comes after human remains were found at the landfill on Tuesday, Aug. 18th with sources telling UWK that the clothes matching what Minnieweather was last seen wearing were also found with the remains.
Police Chief T.J. Morse said that DNA and other testing would have to confirm the find. On Wednesday, the coroner’s office said: “With the assistance of the LSU FACES Lab, led by Dr. Ginesse Listi, and the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab, the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office has made a positive identification of the remains of Ja’Derrius Minnieweather using DNA comparison.”
The cause and manner of death are still pending.
Morse said searchers have battled extreme heat and humidity along with the inherently unpleasant task of searching a landfill.
Investigators believe Minnieweather’s body was dumped by a trash truck into the landfill at 10:32 a.m. on June 22 and they used GPS tracking on equipment to narrow down the portion of the landfill that required searching.
Since the search began about six weeks ago, searchers have found 4,160 bones in more than 4,000 tons of material processed. Experts have examined them and found that none were human remains.
That changed Tuesday morning, Morse said.
Minnieweather was reported missing by his family after they said he was last seen in the early morning hours of June 5th. Since then, Maurice Parms has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of Minnieweather. He was denied bond on June 22. That was the second time he was arrested in 10 days.
“All of our evidence leads to a violent attack that occurred with Mr. Parms on Ja’Derrius, which led to him killing him,” Morse said in a news conference when Parms was arrested. However, Minnieweather’s body had not been found at the time that Parms was charged with first-degree murder.
An arrest warrant for Parms outlines that Minnieweather went to visit a 16-year-old girl, a long-time friend of his, on a small kid’s bike on Thursday evening, June 4. She was out to grab some fast food with Parms, the warrant said, so Minnieweather waited on her. But when the duo returned, Minnieweather and Parms got into a ‘very tense disagreement.’
“Detectives believe that Minnieweather was caught in a confrontation with Parms where he was killed in this struggle. It is believed that Parms stashed the body, that he threw away evidence, came back to retrieve evidence and possibly the victim’s body and transported them elsewhere in his mentioned vehicle,” Parms’ warrant said.
READ NOW: Detailed timeline of events based on arrest warrant
It’s news that hits Minnieweather’s family hard, despite learning that search had now turned into a recovery of his body.
Juwanna Minnieweather, his grandmother, said she is heading to Baton Rouge from her home in Bastrop this afternoon. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster.
“I’m happy and I’m sad, and I’m happy and I’m sad,” she said. “We see closure. We we’ve been waiting. It’s been a long time. It’s been almost three months. So, you know, now we have some closure, especially his mama and his daddy.”
READ MORE: Police, volunteers search landfill for missing teen
“He loved to hang out with his friends and family, love to beg for money,” Minnieweather’s mom Aquarius told UWK during the search. “He did the typical things that a teenager would do.”
Aquarius said the first week when Minnieweather did not show up was out of the ordinary for him.
“He has never not come home or let his phone be dead for this long,” she told UWK. “It seemed like he’d almost have a panic attack trying to put his phone on the charger and come back on. And if it did die and he wasn’t around his charger, he’d use one of his friend’s phones and contact me and let me know he’s on his way home.”
Aquarius said the last time she heard from Minnieweather was on Thursday, June 4. She told UWK she wants some kind of closure. “I love him.”
This remains an active and ongoing investigation.
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