Indianapolis man charged with college student's killing

Michael Anthony Adams and Holly V. Hays, IndyStar
Aaron Staton

The last time Netria Lyons’ friends saw her, she was heading to a night club in Downtown Indianapolis to work security.

Lyons, according to a probable cause affidavit, had invited some girlfriends over to her apartment June 24 but had to cut the party short when she was asked to come into work.

Three days later, Lyons, a hard working 20-year-old preparing for a new semester at IUPUI, would be found dead. She was shot multiple times, court documents said, and police have accused Aaron Staton of pulling the trigger. 

Staton, 35, who court documents describe as Lyons' boyfriend, has  been charged with murder and carrying a handgun without a license in connection with the young woman’s death.

On June 28, Kevin Lyons found his daughter lying on the floor of her apartment in the 6300 block of Mission Terrace. The woman’s body, court documents said, had been decomposing for several days before Lyons found her.

Two men embrace in the parking lot in the 6300 block of Mission Terrace, outside the apartment where a woman was found fatally shot.

That weekend, according to court documents, Netria Lyons cancelled the party and planned to go to work but never arrived.

Instead, she made several calls to Staton and Staton’s ex-girlfriend, Twana Brewer. She’d been wanting to break things off with Staton, Lyon’s family told detectives, and when she finally got hold of Brewer, Lyons told her that she was going to make the rest of Staton’s “life hell since that’s what he did to (her).”

Before the party that Friday, Lyons had talked to her mother about Staton, telling her she didn’t want him in her life, court documents said.

The 20-year-old had recently moved into the northwest-side apartment, was working three jobs and was supposed to start in business administration at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis this fall after a year at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida.

"She was doing a lot for herself," her aunt, Renita Moore-Graves, told IndyStar in June. "She felt like she was doing something."

Netria Lyons, 20, was found dead Tuesday, June 28, 2016, inside her apartment on Indianapolis' northwest side.

About 6:30 a.m. on June 25, while Brewer and Lyons were talking on the phone, Brewer told detectives she heard Lyons “make a noise like ‘ugh’,” before the phone went dead, court documents said.

Brewer, court documents said, knew someone else was with Lyons in her apartment because she could hear Lyons talking to someone in the background, but she didn’t know who it was. When she tried calling Lyons back and no one answered, she sent a text asking, “R u ok.”

Lyons never responded.

Later that morning, Brewer made another call, this time to 911. She'd driven over to Staton's apartment, where her 2-year-old son was staying with Staton's 15-year-old daughter. Staton showed up to the apartment while she was there, court documents said. He was drunk and threatening to shoot himself.

Cumberland police came and arrested Staton when he tried taking a swing at one of the officers, court documents said. Police weren't able to find the weapon Staton was threatening to kill himself with but did locate a box of 9mm ammunition and a bloody T-shirt in his car.

The blood on the shirt, court documents said, was still wet.

Not knowing anything about the incident with Netria Lyons, the ammo and shirt were never collected, and Staton was taken to Eskenazi Hospital for a mental health evaluation.

Two men hug underneath a car port in the parking lot of the Woodhaven Apartments, where a woman was found shot to death Tuesday.

Indianapolis homicide detectives were first turned on to Staton when they interviewed Kevin Lyons, who told them Staton had started dating his daughter after the two met at one of Netria Lyons' jobs, court documents said. 

In the weeks following the incident with Cumberland police, court documents said, Staton had made his way to Atlanta, Ga., and tried committing suicide again. Indianapolis detectives finally caught up with him after Staton's parents, who brought him back to the city, admitted him to the Community North Hospital Crisis Center in July.

When investigators questioned Staton on July 14, he told them he was at Netria Lyons' apartment the night of her party but left when work called her to come in, court documents said. Staton then said he went to a  liquor store, bought alcohol, got drunk and ended up back at his apartment in Cumberland, where eventually was arrested.

But, according to court documents, a review of Staton's cellphone records places him at Netria Lyons' apartment about 6:30 a.m. on June 25, the same time Twana Brewer was talking to Lyons when she heard her say "ugh" before the call went dead.

During another interview with police, Staton said the car he was driving the night he was arrested at his apartment — the same car Cumberland police saw the 9mm ammo and bloody shirt inside — was lost.

Last week, Philadelphia Police Department officers stopped the car and notified Indianapolis detectives that "the possible presence of blood" was found "on both the driver's side and passenger's side floorboard," court documents said.

On Monday, an Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department gang unit, along with the Marion County Sheriff's Office, found Staton and arrested him without incident, a release from IMPD said.

He is being held in the Marion County Jail without bond and is scheduled to appear in Marion Superior Court, Criminal Division, Room 2 at 9 a.m. Wednesday for an initial hearing.

Call IndyStar reporter Holly Hays at (317) 444-6156. Follow her on Twitter: @hollyvhays.

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