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Derrick Wayne Hayes, a native and resident of Morgan City, died Sunday, March 31, 2019, in Morgan City.
Visitation will be Saturday from 9 a.m. until services at 11 a.m. at Jones Funeral Home in Morgan City. Burial will follow in Morgan City Cemetery.
He is survived by his parents, Lois and Sylvester Hayes Jr.; four brothers, Sylvester Hayes III, Ronell Hayes, Travis Hayes and Rodney Hayes; a sister, Sharenda Hayes; and a host of other relatives.
He was preceded in death by his grandparents.
Jones Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

OPELOUSAS (AP) — The suspect in a string of fires that destroyed three black churches in rural Louisiana is the white son of a sheriff's deputy whose father helped arrange for his arrest, authorities said Thursday.
Holden Matthews, 21, faces arson charges in the connection with the blazes in and around Opelousas, a city of 16,000 where the flame-gutted remains of the buildings evoked memories of civil rights era violence.
Louisiana Fire Marshall Butch Browning offered no motive for the fires. He and other officials stopped short of calling them hate crimes. Eric Rommal, the agent in charge of the New Orleans FBI office, said investigators were still looking into whether the fires were "bias motivated."
Browning said there were no indications that anyone else was involved and the danger to churches was over.
"This community is safe again," he said at a news conference. "We are extremely, unequivocally confident that we have the person who is responsible for these tragic crimes."
The Rev. Harry Richard, pastor of Greater Union Baptist Church, which was destroyed, said the arrest put him at ease and let him sleep at night.
"I felt relieved my congregation didn't have to worry anymore," said Richard, who was told of the arrest late Wednesday. "I was reassured that law enforcement was on our side, that things were finally coming to an end."
Investigators used surveillance video, cellphone tracking and a Wal-Mart receipt to help identify Matthews, who was arrested late Wednesday.
A red gas can recovered at one of the churches was sold at Wal-Mart locations, and the company's investigators found that the same type of gas can, was bought March 25 at a store in Opelousas, along with automotive cloths and a lighter.
The debit card used in that purchase belonged to Matthews, according to court documents.
"The purchase time on this receipt is less than three hours before the first church fire was reported," an affidavit said.
In addition, cellphone tower data showed Matthews was in the area of all three fires. And surveillance video from businesses and homes near the churches, and on the roads to and from each fire scene, repeatedly showed a "light colored extended-cab truck" that was consistent with the beige pickup that belonged to Matthews' father. Matthews apparently drove the truck to buy the gas can and other items, according to the court documents.
St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz confirmed that the suspect was the son of deputy Roy Matthews, whom he described as an excellent employee who knew nothing of his son's actions.
The elder Matthews was heartbroken when told his son was a suspect, the sheriff said.
"He broke down," Guidroz said. "It was hard." He said the father arranged for the son to leave the house and go to a place where he could be arrested without incident. He did not elaborate.
The younger Matthews was arrested on three counts of simple arson of a religious building. A conviction could bring up to 15 years in prison on each count, Browning said.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said the fires were "especially painful" because they were a reminder "of a very dark past of intimidation and fear."
"This is a reflection of one depraved individual," he added. "It is not a reflection on the state of Louisiana."
Each church catered to an African American congregation in a rural setting, and each was rendered a charred disaster scene as a result of intense flames.
The fires set many people on edge in and around Opelousas, about 140 miles northwest of New Orleans.
"It's not a super tiny city," Brent Swann, a white, 24-year-old employee at a car rental agency said hours before the arrest. "But it's small enough to where a lot of people know each other, a lot of people go to these same churches together."
Matthews had shown interest in "black metal," an extreme subgenre of heavy metal, Browning said. The music has been linked, in some instances, to fires at Christian churches in Norway in the 1990s.
A Facebook page that appeared to belong to Matthews showed him with the words "black metal" spray painted on a wall behind him. He also posted a comment on a movie's portrayal of black metal musician Varg Vikernes, a far-right figure convicted of manslaughter and arson at three churches.
Black metal lyrics often espouse satanism and paganism, and a few bands feature neo-Nazi beliefs.
The fires happened over a 10-day period. The first blaze torched the St. Mary Baptist Church on March 26 in Port Barre, a town just outside of Opelousas. Days later, the Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas were burned. Each was more than 100 years old.
The churches were empty at the time, and no one was injured. Investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were still combing the scene at Mount Pleasant and warning onlookers away on Wednesday, a week after the fire.
At Greater Union, which burned April 2, the flames caused exterior walls of brick and wood to collapse on rows of metal folding chairs. All that was left of an upright piano was the lattice work of steel strings.
Denzel Washington, a 23-year-old black resident of Opelousas, lamented the loss for the congregation that now has to rebuild.
"But what's the sense in hate? Forgiven. Forgive what he's done. It's not going to change nothing," he said.

BATON ROUGE (AP) — A Louisiana inmate whose case led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling extending the hope of freedom to juvenile offenders sentenced to life without the possibility of parole will hear Thursday whether he’ll finally get paroled after more than five decades in prison.
A three-member board will hear the case of 72-year-old Henry Montgomery.
Montgomery was convicted in the 1963 killing of an East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputy named Charles Hunt; Montgomery was 17 at the time when he killed the officer, who caught him skipping school.
He was initially convicted and sentenced to death. Then the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled he didn’t get a fair trial and threw out his murder conviction in 1966.
He was retried, convicted and sentenced to life without parole and spent decades at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Then the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory sentencing of life without parole for juvenile offenders was “cruel and unusual” punishment. But it didn’t settle the question of whether that decision applied retroactively or only to cases going forward.
In 2016, the Supreme Court settled the matter by taking up Montgomery’s case, and deciding to extend their decision on such sentences to people already in prison.
In the court’s majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said inmates such as Montgomery “must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and, if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored.”
The court’s decision was based in part on research that shows adolescent brains are slow to develop so teen offenders are more likely to act recklessly but also can be rehabilitated. Therefore, they shouldn’t be sentenced as harshly as adults. The sentence can still be used but only in rare circumstances for those unlikely to be rehabilitated.
Since then 1,850 people have been resentenced, including 450 who have been released, said Jody Kent Lavy, executive director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. She said 21 states now ban life-without-parole sentences outright and five others have it on their books but don’t use it. In 2012, only five states banned life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders.
“We’ve seen a consistent trend moving away from these sentences across the country,” she said.
Montgomery was resentenced in June 2017 to life with the possibility of parole and had his first parole hearing in February 2018.
During the hearing he asked forgiveness from the deputy’s family and from God, saying he was sorry “for all the pain and misery that I’ve caused.”
The board voted 2-1 to keep Montgomery behind bars. He wasn’t eligible for another parole hearing until 2020 but his lawyer applied for a rehearing and it was granted.
A decision to grant parole must be unanimous.
If released, he will take part in a post-release plan arranged by the Louisiana Parole Project, which assists juvenile lifers who are leaving prison and re-entering society. The plan would involve an initial place to live as well as mentoring on life skills such as shopping or using a cell phone. Montgomery is also being represented by a lawyer from the group.Inmate at center of landmark juvenile case up for parole

Staff Report
Danos has been awarded a contract across multiple services lines with a Texas-based, independent exploration and production company.
Danos said the project will leverage its Amelia Integrated Services Complex to fabricate piping and structural components that will then be shipped to the installation site in Midland, Texas, for assembly and construction of a central tank battery.
“With this project, we have an opportunity to provide a turnkey solution for a valued customer,” said owner Eric Danos. “By fabricating the components in our Amelia, Louisiana, facility and shipping it to the Permian for assembly, we are able to best use our resources to meet our customer’s needs in managing all aspects of this project.”
The three-month project will use several of Danos’ service lines including fabrication, project management, construction, automation, coatings and scaffolding.
Approximately 75 of Danos’ employees in both Louisiana and Texas will assist with completion of this project. Danos currently has 3,200 employees.
Danos has been awarded a significant contract across multiple services lines with a Texas-based, independent exploration and production company. The project will leverage Danos’ Amelia Integrated Services Complex to fabricate piping and structural components which will then be shipped to the installation site in Midland, Texas, for assembly and construction of a central tank battery.
“With this project, we have an opportunity to provide a turnkey solution for a valued customer,” Eric Danos said. “By fabricating the components in our Amelia, Louisiana, facility and shipping it to the Permian for assembly, we are able to best use our resources to meet our customer’s needs in managing all aspects of this project.”
The three-month project will utilize several of Danos’ service lines including fabrication, project management, construction, automation, coatings and scaffolding.
“Our team’s ability to design and prefabricate the project material is particularly unique. It allows us to operate safer and more efficiently while involving our teams in different geographies,” said Danos.