Fugitive captured in Illinois

by Kevin Lilly
Pharos-Tribune news editor

October 09, 2008 10:59 am

— A former Kokomo man who failed to show up for sentencing in Cass County last year was captured in Illinois this week.
Forty-year-old Troy Shonta Liggin was booked into the Cass County Jail on Tuesday. He had been on the lam since Nov. 29 when he failed to appear for a sentencing hearing in Cass Circuit Court on a charge of possession of precursors with intent to manufacture methamphetamine.
According to deputy prosecutor James Ackermann, authorities caught Liggin in Justice, Ill., and he was extradited to face the class D felony meth charge plus a new charge of probation violation.
Liggin’s legal troubles in Cass County began in September 2006 when an Indiana State Police officer spotted him and another person buying state-regulated pseudoephedrine and returning to the same vehicle. The officer got consent to search the vehicle and found pseudoephedrine, meth smoking paraphernalia and lithium batteries.
Police arrested Liggin and 36-year-old Tina S. Weatherwax of Logansport.
The investigation led the trooper to Weatherwax’s home at 207 W. Linden Ave., where officers reportedly found numerous items commonly associated with the making of methamphetamine.
State police said that evidence indicated meth had been manufactured in the home for a year or longer, but no active meth lab was found.
Both Liggin and Weatherwax bonded out of jail while awaiting the outcome of their cases.
In the weeks before sentencing, Liggin had changed his plea to guilty as part of a plea deal, but he failed to show for sentencing, and Judge Leo Burns issued a warrant for his arrest.
Around the same time, Weatherwax’s defense attorney was arguing that the police officer’s search was illegal because her client was committing no crime at the time of her arrest. Therefore, Weatherwax’s rights were violated and the evidence gathered during the search was inadmissible.
Burns granted the motion to suppress the evidence, crippling the state’s case. The judge’s ruling was later upheld by the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Ackermann, the county’s drug-case prosecutor, said that ruling would not affect the Liggin case.
Liggin’s arrest in Cass County was not his first encounter with the justice system. In 2006 in Howard County, Liggin was arrested on charges of criminal confinement and battery for reportedly assaulting a woman and then holding her at gunpoint.
In 1994, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for shooting a man. Other charges include multiple battery counts, criminal recklessness, possession of marijuana and at least one other shooting, most of which occurred in Howard County.
Liggin remains in jail without bond.
Kevin Lilly can be reached at (574) 732-5117, or via e-mail at kevin.lilly@pharostribune.com