Mom charged with killing 11-year-old son
A Columbus woman was in custody in Louisiana on Wednesday because Mississippi authorities say she killed one of her three sons in a hotel there a day earlier.
Latina Marie Oates, 33, of Columbus, was arrested Wednesday in New Orleans, according to The Clarion (Mississippi) Ledger.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had issued an Amber Alert for Oates’ 9- and 6-year-old sons after a third son of Oates was found dead around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday in a hotel room in Laurel, Mississippi.
Laurel police later identified the deceased child as 11-year-old Joshua Oates. He was a sixth grader at Liberty Elementary School in the
Worthington school district.
Latina Oates was being sought on a first-degree murder charge related to Joshua’s death, according to police. Oates was last seen on surveillance video leaving the Hampton Inn in Laurel early Tuesday with her sons, 9-year-old Mark and 6-year-old Justin.
Oates was taken into custody in New Orleans around 10 a.m. Wednesday in a driveway of a residence there. The other two children were found safe in the vehicle at the time of her arrest and are in protective custody. Police have been in contact with family members.
Police said Oates had been at the hotel since Saturday with her children. It was not immediately known why she was in the Laurel area with her children or whether she had relatives or friends in Mississippi and/or Louisiana.
Laurel police Chief Tommy Cox told The Dispatch that Laurel typically has two or three homicides a year, but the location of this death was unique.
“We’re not talking about a seedy place,” Cox told The Dispatch. “It’s one of the newer hotels” located near an exit off Interstate 59.
“I can only imagine the housekeepers and the individual who found (the body). It had to be extremely hard on them,” Cox told The Clarion Ledger.