Louisiana man sentenced to life in prison for 2022 slaying of priest, parish worker

A Louisiana man will spend the rest of his life in prison after he pleaded guilty to the 2022 slaying of a priest and a parish worker.

Antonio Tyson will serve two life sentences and a 40-year sentence for the murder of Father Otis Young and Ruth Prats, according to a June 8 press release from the office of Judicial District Attorney J. Collin Sims.

Young and Prats were found murdered in Covington, Louisiana, in November 2022; the bodies of both victims were burned after the victims themselves had been stabbed and beaten.

Young, 71, had retired in July of that year after serving as pastor for approximately 10 years at St. Peter Catholic Church in Covington. Prats had been a parish employee at that church.

Tyson was arrested shortly after the murders. Sims’ office said in its release that he pleaded guilty to the murders on May 5. Part of the plea deal included Tyson waiving “all present and future rights to pursue sentence reductions, administrative corrections, judicial reviews, or release mechanisms.”

Tyson will also “be incarcerated within specialized state facilities under conditions identical to capital inmates awaiting execution,” the prosecutorʼs office said.

The severe imprisonment conditions and the appeal waiver “fulfill the explicit desire of the Prats and Young families that Tyson experience the maximal physical restrictions warranted by his heinous offenses, while simultaneously shielding the families from years of appellate delays and litigation associated with a capital trial,” the office said.

Sims in a statement said the sentencing “brings a permanent closure to a deeply painful chapter in our community’s history.”

The prosecutorʼs office was initially prepared to seek the death penalty, Sims said, but “recent disclosures regarding historical childhood IQ testing, [along with] a traumatic brain injury discovered in MRI scans,” meant such a sentence would likely have been subject to “meaningful challenges” at appeal.

“Rather than exposing these grieving families to potentially decades of litigation and the meaningful possibility that an execution could never legally be carried out, this negotiated resolution guarantees that Tyson will remain removed from society for the rest of his natural life under maximum-security, death-row conditions,” the prosecutor said.

Tyson had reportedly been released from prison just a few months prior to committing the murders. His latest sentences will run consecutively to each other, the prosecutorʼs office said.