By VICKIE JAMBON

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – A new public defender has recently been assigned to defend a LaPlace man, arrested in Brownsburg, Ind. on May 17, 2004 for a murder he committed in LaPlace over four years ago.

Attorney Jeffrey Hand was appointed to represent Tyrone Raymond in early January after Attorney Guy Lillian was removed from the case in late December, according to the Clerk of Court’s office. Lillian was reportedly removed from the case due to a reduction in the public defender’s office.

Hand is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 2 to file motions on behalf of Raymond. The case is set for trial on March 21.

Raymond was 29 years old when he was arrested in Indiana for the murder of 61-year-old Janice Fugate.

Fugate was a taxi-cab driver found dead in her home at 2308 Cambridge Drive. Her taxi was found abandoned behind Cambridge Subdivision off Woodland Drive.

Raymond was picked up by authorities in Brownsburg after a concerned citizen notified police about a suspicious-looking individual near a school. He was reportedly taking pictures of children and selling magazines.

After running a police check, Raymond was arrested on a Louisiana warrant and placed in the Hendricks County Jail.

Raymond was immediately extradited back to LaPlace on May 22, 2004.

Sheriff Wayne Jones held a press conference on May 24 at the Percy Hebert Building on Airline Highway, at which time he told a crowd of onlookers that DNA removed from blood and hair samples and nail scrapings confirmed Raymond as Fugate’s alleged murderer.

Jones told the crowd that while the DNA was sent to the state crime lab on Aug. 21, 2000, he did not get information back from the lab until April 22, 2004.

The Sheriff said Raymond lived on the same street as Fugate, only a few yards away and that information gathered in the neighborhood led officers to suspect Raymond.

Jones said he believed Raymond bounced around in the four years he was at bay, and that Raymond did not enter Indiana until two weeks before his arrest. He would not speculate on the motive of the murder but did say Fugate struggled with her attacker.

Judge Mary Hotard Becnel denied bond to Raymond, and he remains in custody at the Sherman Walker Correctional Center.