Texas man declared innocent in 2010 slaying now arrested in another murder
HOUSTON (AP) — A Houston man declared innocent in 2021 after being convicted in a fatal stabbing and serving seven years in prison has been charged with murder in the shooting a fellow motorist, police said.
Lydell Grant, 46, is accused of killing Edwin Arevalo, 33, following a minor traffic collision Thursday night, Houston police said. Police said Grant got out of his vehicle, shot Arevalo and then fled.
HOGP
This image provided by the Houston Police Department shows Lydell Grant, a Houston man declared innocent in 2021 after being convicted in a fatal stabbing and serving seven years in prison. Grant has been charged with murder in the shooting a fellow motorist, police said. Grant is accused of killing Edwin Arevalo, 33, following a minor traffic collision Thursday, April 6, 2023, Houston police said. Police said Grant got out of his vehicle, shot Arvelo and then fled the scene. (Houston Police Department via AP)
Grant was the taken into custody Friday after a warrant was issued for his arrest, police said. He remained jailed Sunday on $1 million bond. The attorney for Grant listed in court records in this case could not immediately be reached on Sunday.
In 2012, Grant was convicted of killing 28-year-old Aaron Scheerhoorn, who was stabbed outside a Houston bar in 2010. Six eyewitnesses to the stabbing had testified against Grant at trial.
But Grant was was declared innocent in May 2021 by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after a new analysis of DNA found on the victim’s fingernails pointed to Grant’s innocence. He had served seven years of a life sentence when he was freed on bond in 2019 to await the appeals court’s decision.
Jon Shapley
FILE - In this Nov. 26, 2019 file photo, Lydell Grant, center, his mother, Donna Poe, second from left, and brother Alonzo Poe, right, talk to reporters after Grant's release on bond in Houston after new evidence cleared him in a 2010 fatal stabbing. Police say the Houston man declared innocent in 2021 after being convicted in a fatal stabbing and serving seven years in prison has been charged with murder. Houston police say Grant is accused of killing 33-year-old Edwin Arevalo following a minor traffic collision Thursday, April 6, 2023. (Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via AP, File)
In 2019, police arrested Jermarico Carter for Scheerhoorn’s killing. Carter, who was tracked down in Atlanta, confessed to the killing. He pleaded guilty to murder in 2022 and was sent to prison.
The Innocence Project of Texas, which had worked to get Grant exonerated, said in a statement that it couldn’t comment on the specifics of the incident on Thursday, which the group noted is an ongoing investigation. The group said its “thoughts and and sympathies go out to the victim’s family.”
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Texas man declared innocent in 2010 slaying now arrested in another murderNomad_Soul // Shutterstock
The average time between the purchase of a gun and its recovery from a crime scene has gotten shorter in recent years, 2023 data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows.
This span of time, known as "time-to-crime," is used to gauge levels of criminal intent in the purchase of firearms, as well as to deduce where hubs of gun trafficking are. A shorter time-to-crime indicates that weapons were likely purchased with criminal intent and might be objects of firearms trafficking.
The ATF traces firearms in order to aid law enforcement in generating suspect leads when guns are used in crimes, as well as to ascertain how and where guns are moved. To do this, members of law enforcement must voluntarily submit trace requests to the ATF, which can evaluate a gun's place of manufacture and where it was first purchased.
Because not all recovered crime guns are reported to the ATF, with some police departments reporting more consistently than others, the accuracy of time-to-crime rates by city or region can be questionable. In Chicago, for instance, the number of gun traces leads other major cities by a significant amount.
Even with inconsistencies in reporting, gun tracing has revealed that some parts of the U.S. serve as hubs for firearms trafficking. Known as the "iron pipeline," gun traffickers notoriously take advantage of lax gun laws in some states in the Southern and Midwestern U.S., bringing them to states with stricter gun laws, particularly in the Northeast and on the West Coast. As a result, just 10 states—including Indiana, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia—are the source of large quantities of guns recovered at crime scenes in New York and California.
In 2020, there was a significant increase in recovered guns with short time-to-crime rates, with numbers nearly doubling from the previous year. This spike came as homicide rates and gun sales in the U.S. also saw dramatic increases. The full impact of the role of soaring gun sales and shorter time-to-crime rates on higher murder rates in 2020 is not yet known. Due to inconsistent gun tracing practices from police departments across the country, an incomplete picture of the true scope of short time-to-crime rates remains.
Stacker compiled gun crime data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on 40 cities across the U.S. and ranked them by five-year median time-to-crime rates. Ties were broken by the percentage of guns used in crimes successfully linked to the known purchaser. Analyzed crime guns were recovered and traced between 2017 and 2021 for 40 cities in the U.S. ranging in size—mega, large, medium, and small.
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Nomad_Soul // ShutterstockThe average time between the purchase of a gun and its recovery from a crime scene has gotten shorter in recent years, 2023 data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows.
This span of time, known as "time-to-crime," is used to gauge levels of criminal intent in the purchase of firearms, as well as to deduce where hubs of gun trafficking are. A shorter time-to-crime indicates that weapons were likely purchased with criminal intent and might be objects of firearms trafficking.
The ATF traces firearms in order to aid law enforcement in generating suspect leads when guns are used in crimes, as well as to ascertain how and where guns are moved. To do this, members of law enforcement must voluntarily submit trace requests to the ATF, which can evaluate a gun's place of manufacture and where it was first purchased.
Because not all recovered crime guns are reported to the ATF, with some police departments reporting more consistently than others, the accuracy of time-to-crime rates by city or region can be questionable. In Chicago, for instance, the number of gun traces leads other major cities by a significant amount.
Even with inconsistencies in reporting, gun tracing has revealed that some parts of the U.S. serve as hubs for firearms trafficking. Known as the "iron pipeline," gun traffickers notoriously take advantage of lax gun laws in some states in the Southern and Midwestern U.S., bringing them to states with stricter gun laws, particularly in the Northeast and on the West Coast. As a result, just 10 states—including Indiana, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia—are the source of large quantities of guns recovered at crime scenes in New York and California.
In 2020, there was a significant increase in recovered guns with short time-to-crime rates, with numbers nearly doubling from the previous year. This spike came as homicide rates and gun sales in the U.S. also saw dramatic increases. The full impact of the role of soaring gun sales and shorter time-to-crime rates on higher murder rates in 2020 is not yet known. Due to inconsistent gun tracing practices from police departments across the country, an incomplete picture of the true scope of short time-to-crime rates remains.
Stacker compiled gun crime data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on 40 cities across the U.S. and ranked them by five-year median time-to-crime rates. Ties were broken by the percentage of guns used in crimes successfully linked to the known purchaser. Analyzed crime guns were recovered and traced between 2017 and 2021 for 40 cities in the U.S. ranging in size—mega, large, medium, and small.
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