New Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Details Plan to Fix Parish Jail, Provides Update on High-Profile Murder Case

AMITE — The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office is preparing for a leadership transition amid ongoing challenges, including a multistate murder investigation and the search for an escaped inmate.

Sheriff-elect Gerald Sticker was sworn in Saturday morning. Residents of Tangipahoa Parish are still concerned about recent jail breaks and are looking to their new leader to help solve the problem.

“Many improvements have already been made to the prison, as we all know with the escapes, and there is still one more to go. But we are working on resolving the issue early this week,” Sheriff Sticker said.

Next week, Sticker says they will schedule a visit with the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections to come up with a list of what needs to be done at the facility.

In May, four inmates escaped through a corroded fence and went unnoticed until a community member alerted the prison.

“This didn’t happen overnight and it’s not going to be fixed overnight,” Sticker said. “We’re doing a lot of things down there, but we have to fix some things, so the parish government and us at the sheriff’s office are going to go in there with the DOC and secure our jail as much as we can.”

Three of the detainees were found and returned to custody, while Jamarcus Cyprian, 20, remains at large. The department blamed the situation on a lack of prison supervision and adequate inventory of inmates. The weakening of infrastructure is also to blame for this situation.

“They've repaired the fence, they've made those initial repairs. As we speak, the Tangipahoa Parish government is coming back from Houston, Texas, with a truckload of barbed wire to further reinforce the repairs,” Sticker said.

WBRZ asked Sheriff Sticker about the high-profile case involving Daniel Callihan, a man accused of murdering a woman and kidnapping her two daughters before killing one in Mississippi. Sticker said he couldn't discuss the details of the case but had a comment to make about Callihan's future.

“Mr. Callihan was returned to Louisiana and is incarcerated in another parish. I will support prosecutor Scott Perrilloux. I want him to be tried here, in the courthouse where we are, and I want him to be sentenced to the death penalty, period. »

Sheriff Gerald Sticker is the parish's first new sheriff in 20 years and his term is scheduled to begin July 1.