In the late summer of 2013, the community of Reserve, Louisiana, was unsettled by the discovery of a young man's body. On the morning of Saturday, August 24, 2013, the remains of 19-year-old Meshach Mason, a Black male, were found along a railroad track near a wooded area on East 16th Street. He had sustained multiple gunshot wounds. Mason was formerly a resident of Reserve before moving to Kenner. His death was the thirteenth homicide in St.
John the Baptist Parish that year.
For nearly a year, the investigation into Meshach Mason's death continued without any arrests. Then, in June 2014, a breakthrough in the case was announced by the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff's Office. Persistent efforts by detectives and evidence collected during the investigation led them to identify two suspects. On June 20, 19-year-old DeQuan Brown of Reserve was arrested and booked with second-degree murder. A week later, on June 27, a second suspect, 21-year-old Detrick Labranch of LaPlace, was also arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Both men were held in custody.
In August 2014, a grand jury indicted both DeQuan Brown and Detrick Labranch for the second-degree murder of Meshach Mason, moving the case towards trial. However, information regarding the outcome of these trials, including any convictions or sentencing, is not publicly available in the online sources. More recent public records indicate that both Brown and Labranch have had subsequent encounters with law enforcement for unrelated offenses.
