Louisville man charged with abuse of a corpse 5 days after body was found wrapped in plastic, duct tape | Crime Reports | wdrb.com

Chadwick Fleming (Photo courtesy of the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Louisville man was arrested Friday and charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence five days after a body was found in the Russell neighborhood wrapped tightly in plastic and duct tape.

Louisville Metro Police spokesperson Matthew Sanders said Chadwick Fleming, 35, was arrested Friday afternoon during a traffic stop at Oak and Dr. W. J. Hodge streets in west Louisville.

Sanders said Fleming was arrested "under his warrant in relation to the homicide," though Fleming isn't charged with murder.

Court records show Fleming was charged with assault in 2010 and 2020, both cases related to domestic violence cases.

Police found Mitchell Jackson Jr. dead with multiple gunshot wounds Oct. 20 at South 18th Street and Muhammad Ali Boulevard, according to a written statement from the Jefferson County Coroner's Office. In an earlier news release, LMPD spokesperson Dwight Mitchell said officers responded to a person down in the road just before 9 a.m. Sunday and found the victim.

Police confirmed that duct tape was found on the body. LMPD said in an update Wednesday that they're aware of "all the rumors and speculation floating around online." But those rumors are false, police said, and they believe this was an isolated incident and there haven't been any homicides "similar in nature."

Still, the way his body was found is causing a lot of concern and speculation.

A man who lives nearby, who preferred to just go by Derek, said he saw a bag sitting in a street and assumed it was garbage.

"I normally pull it to the side. They always dump garbage in the middle of the street," he said Wednesday. "But when I walked up on it, I realized it was long. I was like, 'Oh, my God. This is a dead body.' So I went across the street. Right when I was ready to call, somebody had already called and told me, 'That's OK, Mr. Derek, we'd already made a call.' Police pulled up, put his mask on (and) secured the body until everybody else came."

Derek said the body was wrapped in a plastic bag with duct tape, and that has caused a lot of speculation in public and on social media.

LMPD confirmed that the body was wrapped entirely.

"It was wrapped up in garbage bags. I think it had gray and brown tape on it ..." he said. "And it was neatly secured and wrapped, but really, really, really tight, like you would see on the movie."

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