Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre announced a man wanted for the murder of a five-year-old Paitin Fields in North Carolina in 2017 has been arrested in Lafourche Parish. David Wesley Prevatte, 23, was arrested in Bayou Blue on Friday.

Fields was unresponsive when she was taken to a hospital on November 13, 2017. She was pronounced dead three days later. An autopsy showed signs of sexual trauma and strangulation. The Pender County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina named Prevatte as a suspect in the case in June 2018. In March 2019, Prevatte pled guilty to unrelated charges of intimidating a witness, breaking and entering, larceny, and burning a building. He served approximately ten months before his release from prison in January 2020.

Through investigation, the Pender County Sheriff’s Office obtained an arrest warrant for Prevatte for First Degree Murder, First Degree Statutory Rape, and Statutory Sex Offense with Child by Adult. Investigators from Pender County arrived in Lafourche Parish after tracking Prevatte’s location to Bayou Blue. With assistance from the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, Prevatte was taken into custody on Friday, February 4, 2022. He was booked into the Lafourche Parish Correctional Complex where he will remain awaiting extradition to Pender County.

Pender County Sheriff Alan Cutler said, “This has been an ongoing investigation and I am extremely pleased and proud of the effort that has been put into this investigation by my personnel. I would also like to express my thanks to Sheriff Craig Webre and his staff in Lafourche Parish for assisting our investigators with taking Prevatte into custody.”

Sheriff Craig Webre extended his appreciation to Sheriff Cutler as well. “I offer my sincere gratitude to Sheriff Cutler for the tenacity and professionalism of his team that led to the arrest in this case. We were more than happy to assist in what will hopefully bring closure to a case and bring the perpetrator of a heinous crime to justice.”