Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office Confirms Benton Murder Suspect's Erroneous Early Release | 3 Investigations

BENTON, La. – The Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office confirmed in a statement to KTBS News that Delandro Fleming should have been behind bars at the time he allegedly killed an elderly man in Benton.

KTBS reported on Fleming's erroneous release earlier this week. However, at the time, the Ouachita Parish Sheriff's Office was still trying to determine what happened.

The statement sent Friday by Colonel Larry Knight states the following:

“A preliminary investigation indicates that during the transfer of Mr. Fleming between secure detention centers with mutually exclusive jurisdiction over his detention, a misunderstanding occurred between the Juvenile Services Bureau and the Parish Sheriff's Office Ouachita This resulted in Mr. Fleming's release from custody when an unusual quirk of consecutive incarceration sentences in the separate systems, imposed years ago, was missed and inadvertently not implemented. been reported or discovered by OCC staff. The Sheriff's Office is taking corrective action to close the loophole to prevent a recurrence if these rare circumstances combine again.

Fleming is currently jailed in Bossier Parish under $1 million bail in connection with the murder of Wilmer Monette, 76, of Shreveport. He made his first appearance Monday in Bossier Magistrate Court and the public defender's office was assigned to represent him.

Fleming was arrested hours after Monette's murder. Bossier sheriff's detectives, aided in part by a neighbor seeing the license plate number of the fleeing car, quickly developed Fleming as a suspect and, with the help of a Shreveport police tactical team, arrested him at his residence on Captain Shreve Drive in Shreveport.

Bossier sheriff's deputies said Fleming refused to give a statement to detectives.

Monette's wife and daughter were at his daughter's home when he was shot.

The suspected driver of the getaway car, Destiny Landers, 23, of Shreveport, was arrested the same morning as Fleming in north Shreveport. She is jailed on $500,000 bail.