Document: Woman’s GPS tracking device placed her at shooting victim’s Port Arthur house

Published 12:30 am Tuesday, July 19, 2022

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Police believe phone records, security video and a GPS tracking device worn by a 24-year-old Port Arthur woman placed her at the scene of a fatal shooting, according to court documents.

Lace Skyler Christian told police she found her grandfather, Russell Vernon Reado, dead in a home in the 1600 block of Maple Street when she arrived to borrow his car. She later told police she was just checking on his welfare, according to the probable cause affidavit for her arrest.

Christian reportedly claimed Reado, 71, called her because he wasn’t feeling well, but phone records show he did not call her.

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She also told police Reado was shot, though detectives said she would not have known that from her vantage point as seen from security video.

Security video also shows Christian’s black Toyota Camry at or near the home four times, though she told police she had only been there twice.

According to jail records, Christian also has several traffic related charges, as well as charges of continuous sex abuse of a child and indecency with a child, in addition to the May charge of murder. She was wearing a GPS tracking device at the time of the fatal shooting, police said, which showed her at the home four times, and during the time which police believe Reado was killed.

Reado was found shot to death at 5 p.m. May 10 in the 1600 block of Maple Avenue.

The Port Arthur Police Department had been called to the residence, but did not say by whom.

Reado previously served time in prison for the death of a 2-year-old girl and for a robbery during which a clerk was shot in the early 1980s.