As authorities continue to unravel the circumstances of how a teenager’s body came to be stuffed in the trunk of singer D4vd’s Tesla months ago, a key grand jury witness was dragged back to L.A. from Montana recently, after a judge issued a warrant for his arrest for failing to testify.
Neo Langston, a social media influencer often photographed with the singer, bailed out of the Los Angeles Police Department’s jail for $60,000 over the weekend, records show. LAPD Capt. Mike Bland said the department is not in a position to comment on the arrest.
The development comes four months after the gruesome discovery of the remains of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez in a Hollywood tow yard on Sept. 8. Although the Los Angeles Police Department has publicly declined to characterize the girl’s death as a homicide, a court filing by an LAPD detective referred to the case as a murder investigation.
A swarm of police officers apprehended Langston last Thursday at his mother’s residence in Helena, Montana, after he failed to appear as a witness in a Los Angeles County criminal proceeding. A Los Angeles County jail issued the warrant, officials said.
Lt. Adam Shanks of the Helena Police Department said they were contacted by detectives with the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division to assist with an arrest.
Police took Langston into custody on an outstanding Los Angeles County warrant and booked him at the Lewis & Clark County Detention Center, but he was en route to Los Angeles by Friday afternoon, Shanks said. The next day, Langston bailed out of jail in lieu of $60,000.
Langston had repeatedly balked at testifying before a grand jury in LA, according to sources not authorized to discuss ongoing criminal proceedings. It is unclear if Langston testified or agreed to testify after being jailed. Grand jury proceedings are usually secret.
In November, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office began presenting evidence to what’s known as an investigative grand jury, according to one of the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case with the media.
Since then, numerous other witnesses have been seen entering the grand jury room to testify in the ongoing investigation into Celeste’s death. Among those is one of the managers of D4vd, whose real name is David Anthony Burke.
The grand jury probe of Celeste’s death was first exposed when a grand jury case number was included in a court order.
In that document issued back in November, LAPD Det. Joshua Byers of the Robbery Homicide Division successfully persuaded a judge to bar the LA County Medical Examiner from divulging autopsy results and other details related to the girl’s death that would otherwise be public.
It was Byers who characterized the probe into the girl’s death as “an investigation into murder,” according to the document.
Detectives spent months investigating the circumstances surrounding the girl’s death, as well as her relationship with D4vd.
His Tesla sat abandoned on a street in the Hollywood Hills for several weeks, and potentially months, before its removal. A tow yard worker noticed a foul smell coming from the Tesla and alerted the LAPD.
Inside the trunk, police found a black bag containing Celeste’s remains. Before the sealing of the medical examiner’s records, the office revealed she weighed 71 pounds and had “Shhh” tattooed on her finger.
Authorities uncovered her body the day after Celeste’s 15th birthday. LAPD Capt. Scot Williams, who leads the Robbery-Homicide Division, said the girl had been “dead for at least several weeks.” Williams said the body had not been decapitated or frozen, as some media outlets have reported.
Detectives determined that the Tesla had been left parked along Bluebird Avenue since late July — around the time that D4vd began a national tour. The tour was canceled soon after the death investigation drew worldwide media attention.
