A judge set an initial trial date Thursday for an East Chicago man charged in connection with a 16-year-old’s death during a 2017 drug deal in Gary’s Miller section.
Lawyers said they needed more time because the case was recently reassigned from a former Gary detective now jailed in a federal child porn case.
Marcell Ellison, 25, was charged in January 2023 with murder, attempted murder and attempted armed robbery. His trial date is currently scheduled March 10.
With two men formally charged and a third implicated in court documents, the case has been delayed for years.
Against his better instincts, a 20-year-old man went to a Gary apartment complex on Nov. 2, 2017 to sell 1.5 ounces of marijuana to his then-Walmart co-worker. It was a setup.
The man ended up seriously wounded and his friend Diego Serna, 16, of Hammond, was killed.
Co-defendant Augustus Johnson is awaiting sentencing after signing a plea deal in 2021. At various points, prosecutors filed to squash the deal, then go forward with it.
His next court date is Jan. 24.
In Ellison’s case, defense lawyer John Cantrell told Judge Salvador Vasquez that he and Deputy Prosecutor Keith Anderson were going through discovery — i.e. the case’s evidence — to explore a potential plea deal down the line.
Since the case was reassigned — records show from former Det. James Bond — that process had been delayed, the lawyer said.
Bond, 52, a former deputy chief, Commander, and homicide supervisor, retired from the Gary Police in August while under federal investigation.
He was indicted in September after soliciting an explicit video from a 17-year-old boy working as a city intern in the police department this summer. Investigators found a latent cached screenshot on his iPhone.
His trial is now set for April.