COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Police have made an arrest days after the body of a woman was found in a burned-out vehicle in the woods.
The Cobb County Police Department identified the body as 22-year-old Beauty Couch, an Austell-based Instagram influencer.
Officers confirmed to Channel 2′s Cobb County Bureau Chief Michele Newell on Thursday that they suspected foul play in Couch’s death. On Saturday night, officers said a suspect was in custody, arrested in a Louisiana parish by sheriff’s deputies.
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Couch’s body was found around 12:18 p.m. Wednesday, when Austell Fire Department crews responded to a brush fire at Joe Jerkins Boulevard and Landers Street.
When they arrived, they found a vehicle “fully engulfed in flames.” After putting the fire out, they towed the vehicle to a wrecker yard.
The Austell Police Department sent officers to the address on the vehicle registration and learned the owner’s daughter Couch had not been since since the day before and was the one usually driving the vehicle.
Austell officers searched the area near where the vehicle was found and discovered a body matching Couch’s description in the woodline.
Officers suspected foul play and began investigating Couch’s death.
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Newell was at the Cobb County Police Department Thursday night, where she spoke to the victim’s heartbroken biological mother.
“She was a sweet girl, she never bothered nobody,” Kimberly Couch said. “She never bothered nobody. She was a friend to everybody. She loved going skating. She loved going to work. She loved her clothes. She loved wearing her hair so pretty.”
Couch was known as Beauty Katera online and was a roller skating influencer with almost 150,000 followers. She was known for posting videos of herself dancing and skating at the rink.
According to CCPD, officers were notified by the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Proactive Enforcement Unit that they had found and arrested the 21-year-old Eugene Louis-Jacques in connection to Couch’s death.
He was previously identified as a suspect in the influencer’s homicide by Cobb detectives, according to police.
Cobb officers secured a warrant for his arrest on charges of murder, arson and aggravated assault.
Now, Louis-Jocques is in custody at the St. Tammany Parish Correctional Facility, awaiting extradition back to Cobb County.
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