The Butte County Sheriff’s Office is asking for help tracking Joseph Andrew Perkins.
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. – A murder suspect is still on the loose, and the Butte County Sheriff’s Office is asking for help tracking him down.
Action News Now went out to the Forbestown area, where officers searched for Joseph Andrew Perkins last night.
Courtesy: Butte County Sheriff’s Office
In a video provided by a viewer, you can hear a deputy calling out for Perkins and ordering him to exit through the door.
Action News Now spoke to a neighbor about this situation, but they wanted to stay anonymous.
“They had a lot of officers posted up at the end of Shenandoah. They were saying come out of the trailer with your hands up. Then we heard a few big bangs, probably about 4 or 5 of them; my husband assumed they were like flash bangs,” the neighbor said.
The Butte County Sheriff’s Office says they believe Perkins may be connected to the murder of 61-year-old Richard Kelly, whose body was found on Lodgeview Drive in Oroville on Saturday night.
“We were already aware of the murder in Kelly Ridge, and so we were familiar with the name, and I just remember thinking like ‘oh my god’ like he’s basically in our backyard,” the neighbor said.
But the Butte County Sheriff’s Office says they didn’t find Perkins during their Tuesday night search.
Now neighbors are on edge and high alert after learning that Perkins is still on the loose. One neighbor tells Action News Now that there are a lot of spaces out here where he could hide. There are a lot of vacant and abandoned buildings and trailers all over the place, so people are keeping an eye out for that.
“It was confirmed to us in our little neighborhood up here that he is still at large and could potentially still be hiding up here, and it’s very nerve-wracking. All of us neighbors have been trying to keep pretty close contact. I mean, nobody wants to think that this is a possibility, but we do live out in a rural area, and there are lots of places to hide out here,” the neighbor said.
Butte County Sheriff’s Office is asking anyone with information about Perkins’s whereabouts to give them a call so they can try to track him down.
The Butte County Sheriff’s Office says Perkins is wanted for one count of murder and for being a prohibited person in possession of a gun and ammo.
