Tennessee man, 45, is arrested for flying to California to tell his dad his girlfriend committed suicide before reporting her death to police

 A man from Tennessee has been indicted after he told his father about his girlfriend's suicide rather than reporting it to the authorities.   

An investigation by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Benton County Sheriff’s Office resulted in 45-year-old Jimmy Beck Jr. being charged with failure to report a death under suspicious, unusual or unnatural circumstances and tampering with or fabricating evidence.  

The first investigators were told of Melanie Herndon's death was when Beck's father, who lives in Los Angeles, called the Benton County Sheriff’s Office to inform them.

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Jimmy Beck Jr. was arrested after failing to report the death of his girlfriend

Beck Jr. told his dad that Herndon had committed suicide that morning and flew directly to California to tell him in person instead of informing the local police according to The Tennessean.

Beck Jr. would have been required to give an account of what had happened.   

Law enforcement agents ended up finding the body of Herndon inside her home in Big Sandy, Tennessee west of Nashville on November 26, 2019.

An autopsy found that Herndon had indeed died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Beck Jr. was arrested, and booked into the Benton County Jail on $5,000 bond on Monday after finally returning from California.