Fugitive Held in After-Church Slaying of Boy

James Bartel Collier, the Los Angeles fugitive wanted in the Mid-City slaying of 13-year-old Joey Swift last month, was captured by U.S. marshals Saturday afternoon as he was doing yard work at his uncle’s house in Henderson, Nev., federal officials said.

Collier, who was arrested in the city adjacent to Las Vegas without incident, was booked on a Los Angeles murder warrant and is being held in the Clark County Detention Center awaiting extradition to California, said U.S. marshals spokesman Irv Brandt.

Joey’s mother, Lorri Arbuckle, sobbed into the phone for nearly a minute before she was able to speak after being told of the arrest.

“I am so happy, I am so happy my son did not die in vain,” she said. “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else’s children.”

Joey, a rambunctious eighth-grader, was slain in a daylight drive-by shooting March 23 off Crenshaw Boulevard just north of the Santa Monica Freeway shortly after leaving a church service.

Arbuckle, who lives nearby, arrived at the scene and watched her son cry in pain, then die. The slaying triggered a protest march and outraged condemnation from politicians.

Collier, 24, a parolee, is thought to have been in Nevada only a few days, said John Clark, chief inspector of the U.S. Marshals Service in Los Angeles.

When arrested, Collier “did not have much to say,” Clark said. “He acknowledged his identity, but I guess he knows enough not to say more.”

A second suspect, Dwayne Deshon Pearson, 25, remains at large, authorities said.

Collier’s arrest was the result of work by a regional fugitive task force, organized last summer and combining the efforts of the Los Angeles Police Department and other local and federal law enforcement agencies.

The net began tightening around Collier a few days ago, Clark said, thanks in part to telephone records, which alerted the LAPD’s Wilshire-area investigators to a possible Nevada connection.

U.S. marshals were called in Wednesday to work with LAPD detectives, and began what Clark called unspecified “sophisticated surveillance” techniques in Nevada to track Collier down.

By Friday evening, Clark said, investigators had narrowed the search to a couple of possible addresses. Clark set out by car for Las Vegas, arriving after midnight Friday. About 1:30 p.m. Saturday, he said, Collier was spotted in his uncle’s backyard and was arrested by U.S. marshals, assisted by Las Vegas and Henderson police.

The same fugitive task force used similar methods to catch Timothy Joseph McGhee, a Los Angeles gang leader suspected of multiple murders, in February in Bullhead City, Ariz., Clark said.