Two years after a Bellevue woman's shooting death, a suspect is charged in the case.
The suspect, Anthony Kitchenakow, was arrested at his home on the Menominee Indian Reservation. The Brown County Sheriff's Office has been investigating this case for nearly 25 months.
Authorities say that through the investigation their primary suspect was Kitchenakow, who reportedly fled the area immediately after the homicide.
They say Suzette Langlois' boyfriend owed Kitchenakow a drug debt...and Langlois' boyfriend is the one who found her after she'd been shot.
Investigators believe the drug debt was the motivation behind the shooting. NBC26 reached out to her boyfriend's attorney who tells us that he claims he paid the debt.
The sheriff's office does say that Langlois was also involved in drugs. NBC26 couldn't ask her family about that Friday - authorities say they declined to comment about the investigation.
"By June of this year, our case against Kitchenakow was strong, but we were looking for an additional piece of evidence that would bring it to a level that we wanted before making an arrest," Chief Deputy Todd Delain said during Friday’s news conference.
The Sheriff's Office says last week, they got the result of a DNA test from a gun clip in Langlois' car, and the DNA was a match for Kitchenakow from a previous conviction. Authorities say the DNA places Kitchenakow at the scene and ties him to the weapon.
Kitchenakow is currently held on the Menominee Indian Reservation awaiting transfer to Brown County. Court records did not list an attorney for Kitchenakow.
