French Police Arrest Suspect in Folsom Slaying

French police arrested a California psychologist Thursday suspected of killing his girlfriend and abandoning their 18-month-old son.

A special tactical police team arrested James DeWayne Nivette at 6 p.m. as he was entering his apartment in the city of Munster, near the German border, a regional police commander said.

“They took him very quickly as he entered the staircase of his apartment building,” said Lt. Col. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. “He had no time to move.”

French authorities in Colmar on Wednesday received an international arrest warrant relayed through Interpol from California authorities, and were able to locate Nivette almost immediately.

“He was placed under surveillance to decide how to arrest him most easily,” Rousseau said.

The San Francisco FBI issued an international warning that Nivette should be considered dangerous because he was suspected of having used a firearm to kill.

Nivette was taken into custody after having lunch with a florist who operated her shop on the bottom floor of his apartment house, a San Francisco police detective said.

Rousseau said Nivette could face extradition to California within the coming weeks, but it was not immediately clear if French law would permit extradition.

France, which abandoned the death penalty, does not usually allow the extradition of death penalty crime suspects to states or countries that have it. California authorities could possibly win Nivette’s extradition by guaranteeing that they would not ask for the death penalty.

Nivette’s son, 18-month-old Tyler James Nivette, was found crying on a sidewalk early Monday in San Mateo County, south of San Francisco.

The child’s mother, Gina Kristina Barnett, 25, was found shot to death early Tuesday in a townhouse she and Nivette had shared in Folsom, a Sacramento suburb.

Police believe that Nivette might have shot and killed Barnett on Sunday, abandoned Tyler in San Bruno and left his new car at the San Francisco airport.

Police and court records show that Barnett had been previously threatened with a gun, choked and thrown downstairs during a tumultuous relationship with Nivette.

Nivette was once licensed to practice as a psychologist in California, but lost his license in 1995 after he seduced three women who came to him for counseling between 1984 and 1991. He has two grown children, ages 18 and 28, from a previous marriage.