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The death of a Houma woman last year from a drug overdose has – for the second time – resulted in the arrest of someone she might have called a friend.
Charles Lindy Hammonds III, was arrested Friday at his Roberta Grove home and booked on a charge of 2nd Degree Murder in connection with the Dec. 3 death of Christy Hurst. She was found inside a room at the Economy Inn, during a time when Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives were focusing on a string of drug-related deaths.
An acquaintance of Hurst, Shantelle White, was arrested on Dec. 20 on the same charge, and on the same theory, of having either supplied the victim with the drug or being present at the time she injected.
Hammonds’ bond was set Friday at $1 million; White remains jailed in lieu of a $250,000 bond.
“Hammonds was at the hotel on the morning when Hurst died,” Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said.
Detectives attempted to execute a warrant for the teen’s arrest Friday morning at the aircraft facility owned by his grandfather, aviator and flight instructor Charlie Hammonds, a pioneer in local air transportation. But the aviator’s grandson had already left the air center, where he was employed, and was taken into custody later in the day.
The elder Hammonds said he had understood his grandson was overcoming prior poor decisions, and showed promise while working at his business. He expressed shock upon learning that the teen was wanted, and said he hoped to learn more in the way of details from authorities.
Hurst’s family is aware of the arrest, and knew that authorities were preparing to drop the boom on Hammonds, based on information they had developed early in the case. They cope currently with the heartbreak of knowing that their daughter, although troubled, had been on an upward arc in the months prior to her death.
“I know where my daughter has been and I know what direction she was going in, and it was the right direction,” said her father, Chad Hurst.
He said she had been getting A and B grades at the Unitech Training Academy, where she was studying to be a phlebotomist, and was due to graduate in February.
“This is the beginning for me and my wife of closure,” Hurst said. “By this arrest the truth is finally going to come out. With him lingering around you can’t have closure you can’t have closure when somebody is still out. Someone is doing the same thing and I am visiting the cemetery. It is in the Lord’s hands and the Lord is going to look after what is going to be done.”
Larpenter confirmed that detectives developed information that at some point while Christy Hurst was lying in the hotel room, Hammonds and White were using her automobile.
“We call it a crack rental,” Larpenter said of similar situations his deputies have increasingly encountered. “Someone will give up their car or the use of their car for drug. The drug dealer has permission to use the car. They are using it rather than their own so that we don’t seize it.”
Larpenter said the case is yet another example of how illegal drugs are wreaking death and destruction in this community, like others throughout the nation.
“It is not discriminating against any age group,” Larpenter said. “Wealthy families, poor families, different ethnic backgrounds, it doesn’t matter. “Younger and younger people are getting involved with heroin now. In high school, 16, 17 and 18-year-old kids are doing heroin, crystal meth, mojo, more and more serious narcotics out there.”
Hammonds remained out on the street for a extended period of time, Larpenter said, because detectives were making sure their evidence and facts were in place. People who give, sell or trade illegal drugs to people where a fatality results, he affirmed, will face consequences.
“That is what he is charged with is supplying, giving drugs to somebody and they die,” Larpenter said. •
