Man apprehended by Evansville police K9 was previously sentenced in 2014 killing
EVANSVILLE – The man accused of stealing a truck and then was apprehended by an Evansville police K9 Thursday is the same person who once testified in court that he was the gunman in a 2014 Warrick County murder.
Shawn Michael Grigsby, 35, was arrested Thursday morning and preliminarily charged with auto theft, resisting law enforcement, criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon, methamphetamine possession and other charges.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case, Grigsby tried to steal a Chevy Silverado on North Green River Road while its owner did yardwork nearby. Police say he rammed the truck into a utility pole and then attempted to accelerate after police responded and stood in front of the vehicle.
Police eventually shot Grigsby with pepperballs before he “opened the passenger door and fled on foot,” the affidavit states, causing a K9 officer to chase him down.
In 2016, Grigsby testified in court that he shot and killed 35-year-old Joseph Nelson by the railroad tracks at Liberty Mine in Warrick County two years earlier. The admission came after Grigsby had already accepted a plea deal for his alleged role in the killing, making it impossible for prosecutors to try him for the shooting twice.
“Did you kill Joe Nelson on Feb. 17, 2014?” defense attorney Brett Roy asked Grigsby in court then.
“Yes, sir,” Grigsby said.
Other witnesses in the case named different gunmen, and Warrick County prosecutors were skeptical of Grigsby's confession, the Courier & Press reported then.
He ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 20 years in prison, court records state. But according to the Indiana Department of Correction, he was released from jail in October 2023 and assigned to parole.
On Aug. 4, 2016, a Warrick County jury found Mathew McCallister, now 42, guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the shooting death of Nelson. A judge sentenced to him to life without parole.
In a letter Grigsby wrote to a Warrick County judge last year, he asked to serve his community transition time in South Bend, Indiana, where he’d been housed at a re-entry home for incarcerated people. He said he feared coming back to this area would be “setting myself up for failure.”
What the affidavit says
According to the affidavit from Thursday’s case, an Evansville resident told central dispatch that he’d been doing yardwork when he saw a man get into his unlocked truck.
Police later identified the man as Grigsby. He reportedly locked the truck and “sharply accelerated” in reverse with a trailer still attached, “running into a steel pole behind it.”
The impact reportedly caused Grigsby to sheer the hitch clear of the trailer. Police said he then hit the gas and lurched forward, striking a utility pole in the 1400 block of North Green River Road.
Officers arrived on scene while Grigsby was still inside. He refused to get out, the affidavit states, and officers spent an hour talking on the phone with him.
Then “Grigsby suddenly accelerated the truck while officers (were) directly in front of him, but due to the disabled trailer still being attached, he was unable to move the truck.”
Police responded by firing “less lethal munitions” to break the truck windows and allow them to flood the cab with pepperballs.
Grigsby then opened the passenger-side door and tried to run, the affidavit states, but the police dog caught him.
According to the affidavit, police found a baggie of “crystalline substance” where Grigsby had been sitting that they said field-tested positive for methamphetamine. Other baggies found on scene reportedly contained off-brand Xanax and other pills, EPD said.
After being released from Deaconess, Grigsby was taken to the Vanderburgh County jail, where he’s being held without bond.
His probable cause hearing was scheduled for 1 p.m. Friday in Vanderburgh Circuit Court.
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Man apprehended by EPD K9 was previously sentenced in 2014 killing
