Arron L. Lyons, 32, former Brookhaven resident, was indicted for the murder of John Deere at the Airport Pik & Pack in 2004 on Wednesday.

On Sept. 10, a grand jury handed down an indictment of Lyons for first-degree murder, armed robbery and conspiracy to commit armed robbery.Ten years ago Deere, 55, of Lincoln County, was shot three times outside of his convenience store on Highway 51 in Brookhaven. The case has been under investigation ever since.

In Friday’s Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department press release, Sheriff Steve Rushing stated that Lyons was served his indictment by LCSD investigators along with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation at the Harris County Texas Jail where he is being held on unrelated charges.

Lyons will be returned on detainer to Lincoln County at a future date.

This is the first Deere case action that has been made public since 2007. It has been a decade since the shooting, with two arrests and no convictions, but the investigation has never stopped.

On Jan. 16, 2004 police received an anonymous 911 call at 5 a.m. reporting an incident at the Airport Pik & Pack convenience store. Upon arrival, they found the owner John Deere lying dead in the store parking lot with three gunshot wounds. Investigators suspected he was shot shortly after he arrived to open the store that morning around 4:30 a.m. The hunt for a culprit was on.

Two days after the murder, investigators found the store’s burned cashbox at the Dixie Springs exit off of Interstate 55 N. The fire appeared to have been set using checks that were inside. It was immediately sent to a crime lab to look for fingerprints.

“We are working on (this case) every day,” said Calcote in April after the murder. “We’re tracking more leads and taking different angles on our approach to the case.”

On June 3, Kenneth Baggett was charged with capital murder for killing Deere and in association with robbing the store. On the same day, Baggett pled guilty to a robbery at West Lincoln Attendance Center.

Baggett was held in the Lincoln County Jail for almost three years. Baggett’s attorney Leslie Roussell later showed that during Baggett’s time in jail, retired Lincoln County Sheriff James Wiley Calcote and deputies contacted six inmates in the jail at different times and put them in the cell with Baggett to try and get information from the murder suspect.

In February 2005, divers were seen looking for evidence in Lake Dixie Springs with no comment from District Attorney Dee Bates about what they were looking for, but the gun used to shoot Deere had not surfaced. Bates was unable to say if any evidence had been found because of a gag order that had been issued by Circuit Court Judge Mike Smith in July 2004.

Later that year, the court asked for Baggett’s DNA to see if it matched DNA found on a cigarette left at the scene and for palm prints to see if they matched those left on the glass display case at the convenience store.

A year later, William Hutson, 20, was arrested by the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department as an accessory to capital murder after the fact.

“We finally had someone he’d talked to come forward and give us some information,” Calcote said after the arrest in 2006. “We do have enough information to place him at the scene of the crime.”

Hutson was never convicted and the charge never formally made it to the circuit clerk’s office.

In December 2006, Baggett was released on a $75,000 bond and after years and several grand jury sessions, the case against him came to an end.

On June 6, 2007, three years since his indictment, 14th Circuit Court Judge Mike Taylor signed an order of nolle prosequi, releasing Baggett of all charges. According to the nolle prosequi motion, the snitch testimony given by Sheriff Calcote and deputies was considered improper and tainted, and without that evidence the state was unable to meet the burden of proof.

The motion of nolle prosequi stated the District Attorney’s office reviewed said allegation and determined that although most seem unfounded, a number of the claims regarding the actions of former Sheriff Calcote may have merit.

Bates said in a previous interview that since Baggett was never taken to court, double jeopardy does not apply and he can still be taken to court at a later date for the same crime if more evidence was found.

Seven years passed since Baggett was released and the case had been put to the back of most Brookhavenites’ minds, but the investigation still continued for the LCSD and the MBI.

Sheriff Rushing said his office has remained on the case. He said they have been investigating Lyons for several months. He added that this indictment has no connection to the previous arrests.