STATE COMMONWEALTH ATTORNEY PROSECUTORS HAD CRIMINAL CASE SET FOR ENHANCEMENT DEATH PENALTY TRIAL DUE TO ARMED ROBBERY CHARGES
JANUARY 3, 2020 – written by WADE QUEEN
LAWRENCE LEONARD WARD: INDICTED SUSPECT FOR TRIPLE MURDERING MARTIN COUNTY, KY., NOW PLEADS GUILTY TO THE CRIMES.
Kentucky Commonwealth court officials have announced that a Mingo County, West Virginia man who was indicted and facing a death penalty trial for a triple murder in Martin County, Kentucky will be pleading guilty to the crime and will receive a life sentence.
Lance Leonard Ward, 30, from Williamson, West Virginia, is set to plead guilty to three counts of murder.
According to the Kentucky State Police, Lance Ward on March 23, 2018, shot Amber Lockhard, 31, of Huddy, Micah Sammons, 20, of Kimper, and Dereck L. James, 26, of Huddy, all of Pike County, Kentucky; all three were found shot on Golf Branch, at an old strip mine just off Route 292 near the Lovely area in Martin County near the boundary with Pike County.
Amber Lockhard was still alive at the scene and was transported and died four days later in a Pikeville hospital.
Later in March 2018, Amber Lockhard’s missing vehicle was found across state lines in Mingo County, West Virginia.
In early May 2018, Lance Ward, was charged with the three shooting murder deaths, along with two counts of first-degree robbery, by a Martin County grand jury while he was then jailed in West Virginia on unrelated charges.
Ward was transferred from West Virginia to Kentucky on June 21, 2018 and pled not guilty to the crimes in Martin County Circuit Court, and was booked in the Pike County Detention Center, where he remains lodged.
The trial for Lance Ward, originally scheduled for September 2018, has been on delay since, due to various legal filings.
On January 3, 2019, Ky. Commonwealth court prosecutors filed paperwork to seek the death penalty in the Martin County triple murder case. Lance Ward was then scheduled to be rearranged on the capital charges on February 21, 2019.
Ward’s trial date was tentatively to have to taken place this coming March 2020, nearly two years after his reputed crimes.
With the formal guilty plea deal pending; in exchange, prosecutors dropped the pair of first degree robbery charges against Lance Ward. No date has been set for entering his guilty plea and for his sentencing.
