David Lavon Mitchell Jr. was a 19-year-old Black man from the west bank of St. Charles Parish who disappeared after a mid-July 1997 weekend of family gatherings. He did not return home or show up for work, and his family’s search ended when his body was recovered in water in a ditch along a remote shell road near Louisiana Highway 3160 outside Hahnville. The scene’s location near woods and water and its isolation led his parents to question an official characterization of the death as an accidental drowning.

Mitchell’s death later became linked in reporting and investigations to a broader series of killings across the region in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Law enforcement identified serial-killer suspect Ronald Dominique as a possible connection and indicated Mitchell may have been Dominique’s first victim in St. Charles Parish.

Does anyone who lived on the west bank of St. Charles Parish in 1997 remember David, his movements that weekend, or anything about the stretch of River Road near LA 3160?