BATON ROUGE - State Police across southeast Louisiana were warned to be on the lookout for a murder suspect from the New Orleans area.

Earlier Wednesday evening, a man killed his father and nearly killed his mother. Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputies identified the suspect as Ronald Pritchett, 32. Pritchett stole his dead father's 1997 Chevy Suburban, deputies added.

Investigators said family members told them, the Pritchett started fighting over food and the son followed his parents to their bedroom where he stabbed them. When deputies arrived at the family home on Bellemeade Boulevard in unincorporated Gretna, they found the mother, identified as Renta Pritchett, stabbed in the head near a staircase. Her husband, the patriarch, Percival, in a bedroom also stabbed.

Percival Pritchett died at a New Orleans-area hospital. Renta Pritchett was recovering at another hospital, deputies said. She is expected to survive.

Ronald Pritchett was last seen driving the stolen Suburban with a Louisiana license plate number YJS-758. Pritchett lives in Purvis, Mississippi. A spokesperson with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office suspected the alert to the Baton Rouge area was precautionary, and do not believe Pritchett headed west.

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