RICH SQUARE, N.C. (AP) _ Nearly three years after small-town Police Chief Joe White was gunned down, authorities announced that a Louisiana man had been charged with White’s murder.
Jason D. Hebert, 25, was arrested Thursday in Lafayette, La., on a charge of first-degree murder, Northampton County Sheriff Wardie Vincent said Friday.
Vincent declined to discuss what led investigators to Hebert, a construction worker who did not live in the Rich Square area. He also would not talk about a possible motive for the shooting, which occurred in a parking lot after White made a traffic stop on a Sunday afternoon in July 2000.
Witnesses at the time reported the chief had stopped a green Ford Explorer driven by an unidentified man.
Vincent would not talk Friday about links to the vehicle or why Hebert was believed to be in the area at the time of the shooting.
“He was not living in the area but frequented it,” the sheriff said. He said Hebert had also frequented the Norfolk area.
Vincent said investigators had been looking at Hebert, as well as other suspects, for a long time.
Word of the arrest spread quickly in this a farming community of 1,200 people about 100 miles northeast of Raleigh.
Vincent credited persistent investigators with breaking the case, which had grown old but had not been forgotten. He said his department, which has only three investigators, was helped by the State Bureau of Investigation, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the Norfolk, Va., Police Department.
“I’m numb; I’m just numb,” said White’s widow, Joyce. “The main thing I’m happy about is this man won’t have a chance to do what he’s done to my family again.”
Mrs. White, who sat in a wheelchair because of a hip injury, said she had been in regular contact with investigators, sometimes passing along tips, sometimes asking what they had learned.
She said she had never heard of Hebert before Thursday. She said she would leave it up to a jury to determine his fate. If found guilty, he could face a death sentence.
“I don’t want him ever to walk free on this earth again,” she said.
Despite the support of family, she said, she felt alone without her husband of 40 years.
“He was my buddy, he was my pal, he was everything,” she said.
The arrest brought a sense of relief to residents of Rich Square. They had struggled with the violent loss of a mild-mannered lawman, who they said was more likely to help people than arrest them.
Many had hoped it would not be someone who lived among them and knew White.
“I couldn’t see how anyone locally could do something like that,” said Anthony Clark. The slaying had shaken many in the town, delivering a lesson that deadly violence could break out even in a rural town, he said.
White, 61, started a career in law enforcement about 30 years ago after retiring from the Navy. He had been police chief in the nearby town of Woodland, a Northampton County deputy and a corrections officer before taking over the chief’s post in Rich Square.
He was found dead in the parking lot of a dialysis center on the edge of town after apparently checking a vehicle or making a traffic stop, investigators said. He was shot once in the head, investigators said, possibly with his service revolver, a .45-caliber Glock that was missing.
Dennis Honeycutt, an SBI special agent, said the bureau assigned 49 agents to the case.