On the evening of December 28, 2024, deputies on routine patrol found 25-year-old Yelson Hernan Garcia Banegas lying in the roadway on Lake Road near the boat launch in Lacombe, Louisiana. He had sustained multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Garcia Banegas was a Honduran national who had turned 25 just two days earlier.

The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office Major Crimes Unit opened an investigation that produced a suspect quickly. On December 29, 2024, Osmer Noel Villalta-Lopez, 20, of Ponchatoula was arrested and booked into the St. Tammany Parish Correctional Center on initial charges of first-degree murder and obstruction of justice. On April 16, 2025, a grand jury indicted Villalta-Lopez on second-degree murder and obstruction of justice following presentation by Assistant District Attorney Ronnie Gracianette; the investigation had been led by Detective Katie Darby. Garcia Banegas’s body was returned to Honduras after a funeral service in Covington.

Does anyone have information about Garcia Banegas’s last movements on December 28, 2024?