A Louisiana woman was indicted on Tuesday in connection with the death of Quawan “Bobby” Charles, a black teenager whose body was found in a sugar cane field in November. Janet Irvin, 37, is charged with contributing to a minor’s crime and failing to report a missing child, according to the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.
The 15-year-old was reportedly picked up outside his father’s home in Baldwin, Louisiana, on October 30, by two people, whom Charles’ family said were Irvin and her 17-year-old son. Charles’s parents said they did not know the woman or her son at the time and never allowed him to leave with them.
The police had released a video before the moment they said Charles voluntarily left his home with the two people. The video appears to show someone sitting on the side of a road in front of a house while a silver car passes by. The person then started running after the car and the car returned to the house shortly after. Police said three people, including Charles, got out of the car and went into the backyard before returning to the car and driving away.
The family alleges that the police dismissed their concerns when they first reported Charles missing, speculating that he was at a football game. Police said in a statement Tuesday that they had not been informed of Charles’s disappearance until the afternoon of November 3. Charles was found dead later that evening in a drainage ditch at a sugar cane field in Loreauville, 30 minutes from his home.
Lawyers for Charles’ family told CBS News in December that they had obtained an audio recording in which a woman they say is Irvin admitted that she did not call the police immediately after he ran away from her house.
“Yes, I should have called the police. I should have moved on,” says a woman on the recording.
The family also alleged that Irvin’s son told a private investigator that he and Charles used drugs at Irvin’s house.
“Did he smoke anything or, I mean …?” the researcher asks.
‘Yes, he smoked some weed. That was it, ”one man replied.
Ronald Haley and Chase Trichell, lawyers for the Charles family, at the time believed there was enough evidence to arrest Irvin on “a lot of charges.” It was their private investigator who recorded the conversation.
“She knew something was wrong and did nothing,” Haley told CBS News in December. “It speaks volumes about what her involvement in this case was.”
The sheriff’s office at the time said it knew nothing about the recording and the information was not shared.
Local organization Stand Black called Irvin’s arrest a step toward justice, CBS Lafayette, Louisiana, affiliated with KLFY-TV said.
“Today is a starting point, but this is a marathon and not a sprint,” said Jamal Taylor, Co-founder of Stand Black. “Now we need to mobilize to change laws that protect against these kinds of atrocities. We need to pass laws that protect children and laws that reform police accountability.”
Charles family lawyers released a statement on Tuesday saying, “We will continue to fight, we will continue to advocate for Quawan’s family, and we will work tirelessly to pursue justice, transparency and accountability.”
In October, Charles’s family said they believed the police did not take his disappearance seriously because he was black. There was no Amber Alert after he was reported missing, but police claim “all procedures have been followed”.
“People are angry. People are upset,” Charles’ cousin Celina Charles told CBS This Morning’s national correspondent Jericka Duncan at the time.
In a previous interview with KLFY, Samuel Wise, Baldwin’s assistant police chief, said there was no evidence that Charles had been kidnapped or that an Amber Alert was needed.
The coroner’s office had said at the time that the teenager had likely drowned and had no injuries before his death. They also ruled that the wounds on his face had occurred after his death and were likely caused by aquatic animals.
On February 5, a forensic autopsy report indicated there was no sign of a struggle prior to Charles’ drowning, but it stopped explaining how he drowned. “It is possible that the deceased hallucinated because of a psychosis, which led to disorientation leading to an accidental drowning,” the autopsy report said. “The alleged circumstance that he would say he would commit suicide, and the absence of injuries, suggests that suicide may be the means of death.”
But in a statement in response to that report, lawyers for Charles ‘family said the only “reasonable conclusion” is that Charles’ death was a murder. “The only rational, obviously obvious conclusion here is that there was foul play at work here,” the statement read.
Irvin remains in the Iberia Parish prison. A judge on Wednesday set her bail at $ 400,000 for the two charges. Police said the investigation into Charles’s death is continuing and more arrests may come.
Jericka Duncan contributed to this report.