YAZOO CITY, Miss.–Whether a former Yazoo City police chief is indicted on murder charges is now up to a grand jury. The Yazoo County Sheriff’s Dept. arrested Jay Winstead, 50, Friday and charged him with capital murder in the death of Timothy Byrd.
In a news release posted on Facebook, deputies said they were called about 6 Wednesday night for a suicide, a self-infliucted gunshot wound, as it was reported. There they discovered Byrd dead and began collecting evidence and questioning Winstead.
They said they detected several discrepancies in his story and uncovered more physical evidence that foul play was involved.
Saturday they arrested Winstead and charged him with capital murder, which indicated pre-meditation and could carry a sentence of life in prison or death.
After receiving much criticism for the arrest, as Winstead is a popular community figure, the sheriff’s department posted the following:
Evidence is evidence. I understand a lot of people are upset behind this and so are we. We all worked with this guy at some point in our law enforcement career, but these kinds of warrants don’t get signed without sufficient evidence to do so. We have no reason to fabricate charges and once again there is evidence all over this case that none of you know about at this point. My prayers goes out to the families of both parties in this situation.
