Case of burned-alive teen results in 17 arrests

Therese Apel | The (Jackson, Miss.) Clarion-Ledger

Show Caption Hide Caption Names of Panola County arrests released live on video During a live Facebook chat on Tuesday's Panola County arrests and the link to the Jessica Chambers case, Breaking News Reporter Therese Apel received an email from the FBI with the names and charges of those arrested.

JACKSON, Miss. — An investigation into the death of a teenager burned alive last year has resulted in the arrests of 17 men — but none has been charged with killing Jessica Chambers, the FBI said Tuesday.

The crimes were uncovered as authorities probed the 19-year-old's death, and that case is continuing more than a year after Chambers was doused with gasoline and set afire a little after 8 p.m. CT Dec. 6, 2014, near Courtland, Miss., about 150 miles north of Jackson. She got out of her car, was found on the road with burns over most of her body and died hours later at a Memphis hospital.

Since the killing, officials have interviewed more than 150 people and sorted through more than 20,000 phone records trying to find her assailant, Panola County Sheriff Dennis Darby said. That's when investigators turned up evidence of other suspected illegal activity ranging from narcotics sales, possession of stolen firearms and possession of counterfeit currency.

FBI agents targeted suspected members of the Black Gangster Disciples, Vice Lords, and Sipp Mob street gangs and began arrests at around 4 a.m. CT in Oxford, Miss. The men arrested ranged in age from 18 to 40 and have been indicted on for federal and state crimes.

"It's taken eight or nine months if not a little longer to get to this point," District Attorney John Champion said. "And this is not over by any stretch of the imagination."

Darby has alluded to the fact that the Chambers case would lead to other major case breaks.

"This is some part of it. It's the state, feds and us working on this stuff," Darby said. "We've told them and told them that this was coming. We're not playing with them anymore."

A team of investigators from the Panola County Sheriff's Department, Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, and the U.S. Attorney's Office still are digging into Chambers' death. A lack of street chatter has made the case a tough one to crack, authorities have said, causing much of the investigation to hinge on data collection.

Follow Therese Apel on Twitter: @TRex21