The dismissal of murder charges in a nearly 4-year old Fall River County case isn’t sitting well with relatives of the victim.
The body of 32-year old Moses Dubray was found along Hwy 89 on Jan 11th, 2017, a day after he’d walked away from the state minimum-security prison in Rapid City.
30-year old Thomas Lucero was indicted 8 months later on alternative counts of 1st and 2nd-degree murder and was scheduled for trial late last month, but Assistant Attorney General Scott Roetzel dismissed the charges shortly before it was to start.
Lucero remains in custody because he’s serving a 12-year sentence in the South Dakota State Penitentiary on a 1st-degree robbery conviction from the Sioux Falls area.
The dismissal filing says a key state witness was unable to testify, but Dubray’s sister, Irene “Jay R” Mabin, says prosecutors told her they dropped the case because the witness has been deemed mentally incompetent.
Mabin says she and other relatives were distraught when told that the murder charges were dismissed.
Court records show the state’s theory of the murder is that it was related to a major drug cartel. It says Lucero and Dubray were connected to the cartel and were riding with a third person at the time of the murder.
Lucero allegedly forced the driver to pull over and Dubray to get out of the car before shooting Debray once in the head. The driver, whose name has not been released, was the witness who was ruled mentally incompetent.