WALKER — What was supposed to be an exciting day marking the start of a newlywed couple’s next chapter turned into a nightmare. The couple, who asked not to be named, planned to load a moving van and head to a new city, only to discover that their storage unit, which had once been filled with unopened wedding gifts, technology, and collectibles, was nearly empty.
‘Misfortune awaits you’
“How could this be happening the day I have to move to my new apartment, the day I’m supposed to be starting my new life?” the victim told UWK. “It almost felt like a bad omen.” The couple remembered the sign outside the Walker Wendy’s that morning for a promotion reading: ‘Misfortune awaits you.’
“When my husband saw that, he thought, ‘Uh oh, something’s going to happen today.’”
She said her husband arrived at the storage unit before her on August 2 and called her with the news.
“He told me, ‘Everything is gone. Everything,’ she recalled. “I felt my heart sink. I just started crying. I’m like, ‘We need to call 911.”
What was inside
The couple’s storage unit was initially just the groom’s. He put most of his personal belongings in the unit when he moved in with the bride and her parents. Once they got married they put wedding gifts in it, so they would have everything when they moved to their new apartment. “We thought it would be okay because the storage unit said 24/7 surveillance and had a lock,” the bride said.
“It wasn’t anything crazy. I’m talking mugs, pots and pans, a towel warmer,” the bride explained. “Maybe something a little nicer, like a nice coffee maker, but it wasn’t anything luxurious. It was more things to live on.”
The bride told UWK that her husband had some work computers in the unit with sensitive information on them, a gun inside a safe, a TV, a PS4, and 3D printers. And it was an item her husband put in the unit before they were married that helped police eventually find the suspects.
“My husband remembered he had an electric scooter,” she said. And that scooter had an air tag inside. “He was like, ‘Wait, my scooter is charged. We can see the location.'”
Starting the search
The groom and Walker Police worked to track the scooter, and located it in a trailer park. Officers and the groom headed there, but couldn’t find it. “They searched up and down. They crawled under the crawl space,” the bride explained. “They said they did whatever they could. They could not find the scooter.”
“I was really devastated. My husband was devastated,” she said. “The police said they were going to stay on the case, and we gave them an itemized list of our stuff.”
The bride said she checked in with Walker Police every day to make sure the case wasn’t forgotten. She and her husband kept tracking his scooter, and could see it moving around the trailer park. She also kept tabs on Facebook Marketplace and other similar websites to see if any of their items were ever listed for sale, but nothing ever popped up.
Waiting game
The couple moved to a new city, because the bride is a PhD student and had to start school. “We were having to bum pots and pans off our family members. We didn’t have our furniture yet, so we were literally sitting on the floor eating from other people’s plates,” she said.
The bride and her husband are both in graduate school, and her husband works full time. She credits her friends and family for helping the couple get through this difficult time. “Our friends and family really came together for us because they raised, like, $2,000 in a week,” she said.
Meanwhile back in Walker, police were working with the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office on the case. Several days after the initial investigation, Walker Police learned about a Denham Springs woman, 44-year-old Torrie Lacey. Lacey is a neighbor of the residence police and the groom’s husband tracked the scooter to on August 2. They said she also has a storage unit at the same storage facility the newlyweds used.
The bride’s mom eventually made some calls to law enforcement personnel to get some answers. “She spoke to them, and they told her that they would send units in the morning,” she said. “The next morning, we heard that there were 17 units at the trailer park.”
Unusual FaceTime call
According to police, Walker officers and LPSO deputies went back to the trailer park and found Lacey and 40-year-old Jason Rex, of Denham Springs, in Lacey’s residence.
Rex told authorities the scooter was in a nearby shed. Rex also told investigators he had been the successful bidder for an abandoned storage unit. That storage unit he said he ‘won’ was at the same facility where the newlyweds kept their things. Rex said the e-scooter and other items that authorities eventually found, were in the abandoned storage unit.
“I’m not 100% sure what was said,” the bride said. “What I do know for a fact is that the side wall of our storage unit was kicked in. Detectives were FaceTiming my husband because they had gone back to his unit, and they showed him basically where the damage was.”
Back at the trailer park, authorities obtained a search warrant for Lacey’s residence, and they found a ‘substantial number’ of items belonging to the couple. They found even more of the couple’s belongings inside Rex’s residence.
“I got a call the very next day from the detective, and he’s like, ‘We found the scooter,’ she said. That call was followed by a FaceTime. “and they FaceTimed me, and”What they’re showing me it was crazy. They’re FaceTiming me in the house of the thieves, and it was like something out of NCIS.”
“I see my bridal shower bouquet literally propped up in their house,” she said. “My salt and pepper shakers that people got us. At one point, I’m like, ‘Oh, those are my mugs!’ It’s a set of mugs, but I’m missing a mug. And the detective turns the camera around, and one of the suspects is drinking out of the mug. I’m like, ‘Wow, oh my gosh, he’s literally drinking out of my mug.”
“At one point they’re going around the room, they’re showing me these, like, dirty towels, and, asked, ‘Do you want these back?’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely not.'”
Suspects arrested
The bride said investigators found about half of the couple’s belongings between the two homes. Authorities arrested Lacey and Rex on simple burglary charges. The two were also booked on drug related charges by LPSO.
“We are pleased to have been able to clear this burglary so quickly,” said Walker Police Chief David Addison. “Our Detectives and those of the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office did a great job of identifying the people responsible for this burglary and recovering so much of the stolen property.”
“I saw that there were drug charges, and called the detective, and I said, ‘You know, I don’t want my stuff back that was used for cooking,'” the bride said. “I’m a scientist, and even when you try to clean things, if there’s drugs and there, you don’t know what chemicals mixed together. So I wanted to remain on the safe side.”
The bride said she doesn’t know when they will get the items that they are interested in having back. “Police told me I need to talk to the DA’s office,” she said. “I’ve called the DA’s office, but they don’t have the case yet, and I know it’s an ongoing investigation. I think, until they close the investigation and have all the charges, they might need our stuff for evidence.”
“I’m so glad it happened to us”
Throughout all of this, the couple has remained positive. “I kept telling my husband that I’m so glad that it happened to us. And I know that sounds so weird and like such an awful, crazy thing to say, but we had the means,” she explained. “We had family, we had friends, we had people come through for us, people willing to give us their cooking utensils. Imagine if it would have happened to someone who had literally nothing.”
“I’m just really happy with it happened, is all I can say. Because we were able to come back from it. But not everybody can.”
One of the things that upsets the bride most about the situation is the drug charges. “I understand that life is hard, and, like, you know, it’s like, job market is hard, the economy is public. Everyone is struggling. It’s not just one person,” she said. “I wouldn’t have even cared if they needed it.”
“But when I heard that there were drug charges involved, it just really burned me up. I’m getting my PhD in Biomedical Sciences. Where I’m going to school, we have entire addiction centers. So to even think that my stuff may have been used to fulfill a drug habit really just hurts. This isn’t going to someone who needs it.”
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