Nearly two years after an alleged drug rip-off at an East St. James Street apartment turned deadly, a second suspect has been indicted for the killing of Romero K. Underwood.

On Friday, an Ulster County grand jury handed up an indictment charging Callin LeMon with second-degree murder in connection with the July 2020 killing.

Police believe LeMon and accomplice Raymond Snyder went to Underwood’s residence around 5 a.m. on July 11, 2020, shortly after Underwood returned from a trip to Albany to buy drugs.

Underwood was later found shot to death inside the foyer of the apartment. Just hours after the killing, police obtained a search warrant for a residence where Lemon lived with his mother. The search turned up two stolen handguns, a Glock .40-caliber and Glock Model 26 9 mm that prosecutors believe were used in the robbery. The 9 mm had Underwood’s DNA on it while a .40-caliber shell casing discovered at the scene matched the other gun. LeMon was charged with felony criminal possession of a weapon at the time.

On Tuesday, Ulster County District Attorney Dave Clegg said LeMon was not charged with murder at the time because of a delay in obtaining a ballistics match between the .40-caliber handgun and the shell casing found at the scene.

“The matching of ballistics wasn’t addressed at that point in time,” said Clegg.

In January 2021, Snyder was indicted on a murder charge based on DNA evidence from blood discovered in Underwood’s apartment, in a vehicle caught on video leaving the crime scene and at Lemon’s residence, where the alleged murder weapons were found. Police also had a witness prepared to testify that just moments before the home invasion robbery, she’d tipped off Snyder that Underwood was back in town with the drugs.

But in April of this year, the case against Snyder collapsed after County Court Judge Bryan Rounds tossed out virtually all of the prosecution’s evidence based on what he ruled were serious violations of the state’s recently revamped discovery statute that requires prosecutors to turn over evidence to the defense prior to trial. Claiming that he no longer had a prosecutable case, Chief Assistant District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji declined to appear at Snyder’s trial; Rounds then granted a defense motion to dismiss all charges. Snyder was released immediately at remains at liberty.

At the time, Clegg conceded that two prosecutors who handled the case before Nneji had bungled the discovery process, but argued that Rounds had other options to remedy the error besides effectively pulling the plug on the prosecution. In April, Clegg said that intended to file an Article 78 challenge in state Supreme Court seeking to nullify Rounds' decision to toss the evidence. But on Tuesday, Clegg said that he had still not filed the legal action.

The murder charge against LeMon uses the “felony murder” theory under state law meaning that prosecutors don’t have to prove he fired the fatal shot, only that he was a participant in the felony crime — in this case robbery — that led to Underwood’s death.