Just a troubled boy.
After Dakota Theriot lost a place to stay a couple of weeks ago, a family took him in.
A new friend, Summer Ernest, allowed him to stay in her father’s Louisiana home, not far from Baton Rouge. That’s just how Summer was, her cousin said, loving and caring to someone in need of help.
But violence devastated the Ernest family this weekend, after the young man they barely knew allegedly went on a shooting rampage and killed the people who helped him. Theriot then drove to his parents' trailer in a neighboring parish and killed them, too, authorities said.
The 21-year-old drove away, setting off a day-long manhunt that spanned multiple states and ended with his arrest Sunday more than 1,000 miles northeast, in rural Virginia, where some of his family members live.
“For someone to do that, someone so young, someone connected to his victims, the fact that the family took him in and this is the end result, it’s kind of jarring for all of us,” said Lori Steele, a spokeswoman for the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office.
The rampage shocked some of Theriot’s friends, who described him as someone who had troubles in school, but was otherwise a friendly person.
“I grew up with him. I knew he wasn’t like that,” said Cory Flannery, of Montross, Va., who said he and Theriot attended middle school together in Richmond County, where Theriot lived for some years as a child. “I just want people to know that Dakota was not that person. That wasn’t him. Something had to have happened.”
Authorities said they do not know why Theriot, who had been arrested for minor drug possession but has no history of violent crimes, resorted to such violence. They said his parents kicked him out of their trailer a couple of weeks ago, but they do not know why or whether he had been estranged from his family. Flannery said Theriot had a tumultuous relationship with his father.
Investigators also have not said what type of weapon Theriot used or how he obtained it.
