Trial begins in meth-injection homicide case

Shawn Lindsey was bound and tortured by a group of men at a west Wichita auto shop before he was injected with a lethal dose of meth, a prosecutor told a Sedgwick County jury on Tuesday.

“They taunted him, they tortured him, and they shot him with BB pellets for their own amusement,” Assistant Sedgwick County District Attorney Tyler Roush said.

At one point, Roush said, the men wrapped an electric fence around Lindsey, and one of them fired pellets at the on switch.

Roush said it was all done because Lindsey owed money to the owner of the shop, Dang Sean – a man that a defense lawyer described as “a scary guy” with a volatile temper.

Sean, 33, and two other men, brothers Jason and Justin Jones, both 31, are charged with first-degree murder in Lindsey’s death. Jason Jones is the first of the three to stand trial.

Wichita police said Lindsey, 34, was killed on the night of Jan. 11, 2013, in an auto repair shop at 116 S. Vine. Police said his body was then taken to a wooded area near K-96 and Hillside and dragged into the brush, where it was found five days later by surveyors.

Roush said police initially didn’t know the cause of Lindsey’s death.

“There was no obvious sign of trauma,” he said. “There was no bullet hole in head or anything like that.”

An autopsy later found meth in his system.

“The amount of methamphetamine is not just a lethal dose,” Roush said. “The amount found is eight to 10 times what you’d expect to find in an overdose.”

Defense lawyer Carl Maughn told the jury that everyone in the shop used meth. He said Lindsey was a former co-owner of the business who had been using the company credit card for personal expenses. He said Lindsey was a meth user and dealer who sometimes got his drugs from Sean even after their business relationship had ended.

Maughn said his client was at the shop on the day Lindsey was being tortured, but was not a participant.

“He was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the company of the wrong people doing bad things,” he said.

Maughn said Jones last saw Lindsey on the night of Jan. 11, 2013, when he was loading him into a pickup to be driven to the hospital.

“At that time, Shawn Lindsey was awake, alert, alive and talking,” he said.

This story was originally published April 22, 2014 at 8:36 PM with the headline "Trial begins in meth-injection homicide case."