Conway - Prosecutors say Shane Lonix, the man accused of murdering Plumerville Police Department Assistant Chief Joseph Cannon on Friday morning, may have stolen the murder weapon from a Conway home earlier this month.

A Conway Police Department incident report lists Shane Ashton Lonix, 22, of 19 Rolling Pines Cove, as a suspect in the theft of a black Toyota Avalon from a residential garage on Chapel Hill Drive on the night of June 1 or early morning of June 2.

According to the report, the Toyota was one of three vehicles parked in the garage. Credit cards were stolen from one of these other vehicles. From the other, a .22 caliber High Standard revolver was taken.

The 15th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney's office confirmed Tuesday that Cannon was killed by a single shot to the chest from a .22 caliber handgun as he approached a suspected stolen vehicle during a traffic stop. A High Standard nine-shot .22 caliber revolver was found when Lonix was arrested Friday morning.

Robert Williams, the owner of the gun stolen from his Chapel Hill Drive home, said Tuesday that his gun matches this description, and that he had been contacted by authorities hoping he could identify it as the one stolen from his vehicle.

"They had called and said they'd bring a picture of the pistol so I could identify it," Williams said.

Williams said he hasn't seen the photo yet, but is confident he can identify the weapon as his.

"That gun had a distinctive set of marks on it. It looked like it had been put in a vice," Williams said. "I guess somebody in the past had been shooting it in a vice, and that vice left marks on the frame. I could tell it in a New York minute; there ain't another one like it."
Williams said he didn't record the revolver's serial number.

Police began suspecting Lonix was involved with the theft on June 2, when William Woody noticed a suspicious car parked near his rural Allen Drive home, a few miles east of Lake Conway. Woody contacted his neighbor, Det. Tommy Balentine of the Conway Police Department, by phone and read him the vehicle's license plate number, which checked out as being issued to Williams' vehicle.

Balentine went to the area where Woody found the vehicle and was waiting for Williams to arrive and reclaim it when he noticed two men walk up to the vehicle. Balentine approached and asked the two what they were doing.

One of the men said his name was Christopher Lonix, 24, but didn't have any ID.

Lonix told Balentine that he and the other man had been visiting a "home boy" in the area, and that they walked along a cleared row of power lines every day to get there.

Balentine and Woody both live near this row of power lines, Balentine notes in a report written on June 2, and "knew that this information was incorrect," but had no proof that the men had committed a crime. They were told to stay off the property and left on foot.

When Williams arrived, he drove past Lonix and the other man walking a short distance from the stolen vehicle. He said Tuesday that the men may have recognized the vehicle he was driving, as it was in the garage with the stolen Toyota.

"(Williams) said that when they saw the vehicle he was driving they looked 'all bug-eyed and scared,'" Balentine wrote in the report. "I explained to him that I needed more proof of misconduct than he had to arrest them."

When Balentine arrived at CPD on that day, according to his report, he decided to look up a photo of Christopher Lonix to make sure it was the person he had talked to. It wasn't, he wrote in the report.

"I was telling Det. (Mike) Welsh about the incident and he suggested that I look at Shane Lonix, because he thought that was who I was talking about," Balentine writes. "I found a photograph of Shane Lonix and saw that he was the individual that I had dealt with."

A warrant based on Balentine's observations was issued on June 5 for Lonix's arrest on suspicion of obstruction of government operations, a misdemeanor. It was unclear at press time if this warrant had been served.

Lonix was served a District Court of Faulkner County warrant for misdemeanor unauthorized use of a vehicle, stemming from a June 2008 incident in which he was alleged to have stolen a vehicle from a female friend. Lonix pleaded guilty to this charge on Saturday and was ordered to pay a $250 fine.

Conway County court documents released Monday show that Lonix admitted in a statement made to investigators after he had been read his Miranda rights and arrested that he had shot Cannon Friday morning and had stolen the pickup truck he was driving at the time from a Pulaski County residence.

He is expected to be arraigned in Conway County Circuit Court on charges of capital murder, possession of a firearm by certain persons and theft by receiving on July 14, according to the 15th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney's office.

At the time of the shooting, Lonix was wanted by Faulkner County authorities for violating the terms and conditions of parole set for a felony hot check conviction.

(By Joe Lamb, Log Cabin Staff Writer.)

 Email To Friend