Miami-Dade deputies arrested Darrell Anderson after finding Jean Paul Larice's decomposing body hidden under yoga mats in a car at Northside Shopping Plaza.
Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office deputies arrested 39-year-old Darrell Anderson on August 17 after linking him to a decomposing body found in a car at Northside Shopping Plaza in unincorporated Miami-Dade. The body belonged to 36-year-old Jean Paul Larice, the car's owner, who was found covered by yoga mats in the backseat of his Kia K4 in late May. Anderson faces charges including failure to report a death with intent to conceal, grand theft of a vehicle and dealing in stolen property, and is held on $10,000 bond.
A car sat for two days in the parking lot of Northside Shopping Plaza before anyone called about the flies.
Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office deputies responded to the plaza at 7900 Northwest 27th Avenue on May 27 after someone reported a foul odor and swarming flies around a blue 2026 Kia K4. Inside, under two rubber yoga mats in the backseat, they found the body of 36-year-old Jean Paul Larice, the car's owner, in what an arrest report described as an advanced stage of decomposition.
That discovery, according to the Sheriff's Office, led investigators to Darrell Anderson, 39, of Miami, who was arrested Monday and charged with failure to report a death with intent to conceal, grand theft of a vehicle, dealing in stolen property and providing false information in a pawn transaction. A judge set his bond at $10,000 during a Tuesday hearing.
According to the arrest report, Anderson told detectives he got into Larice's car on May 23, when it was being driven by a man investigators have not identified. Larice, he said, was already unconscious and slumped over in the backseat. The two men then drove Larice around to several liquor stores.
Sometime during the early morning hours of May 24, Anderson told deputies, he realized Larice was dead. The other man got out of the car and left, according to the report. That left Anderson alone with the vehicle and Larice's body for roughly a day and a half while he decided what to do with both.
What he decided, deputies said, was to pawn Larice's cellphone. Anderson took the phone to an ecoATM kiosk at a Walmart on Northwest 79th Street near the shopping plaza and signed a legal declaration claiming the phone had been given to him as a gift by a friend named "Raymond" in Homestead, according to the report. Investigators said that claim was false.
Surveillance video from the shopping plaza then captured Anderson getting out of the driver's seat of Larice's car on May 25 and walking away without alerting anyone that a man was dead in the backseat, the report states. The car remained in the lot, with Larice's body still inside, until the smell drew attention two days later.
Deputies said they located Anderson on Monday, nearly three months after the body was found, and that he confessed to the sequence of events during questioning. Investigators have not said what led them to him or why the arrest came months after the discovery.
Anderson made his first court appearance Tuesday afternoon at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where he was appointed a public defender. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mindy Glazer, who set his bond at $10,000, remarked during the hearing, "Okay, interesting case, not the ones we see everyday."
Larice's cause of death has not been determined. The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's office is still investigating, and the Sheriff's Office has not said whether the unidentified second man who was in the car on May 23 has been located or is being sought. No additional arrests have been announced.
Northside Shopping Plaza sits in an unincorporated pocket of northwest Miami-Dade known as West Little River, along a stretch of Northwest 27th Avenue lined with retail storefronts. Deputies said the odor complaint that brought them there in May came from a passerby, not from anyone connected to Larice or Anderson.
Anderson's next court hearing has not yet been scheduled. Prosecutors said the case will move forward once the medical examiner determines how Larice died; for now, the charges against Anderson cover what happened after Larice's death, not the death itself.
