‘Blessed to be home’
Lydell Grant celebrates his freedom with his family Saturday at his Bear Creek home. Grant served more than seven years in prison for a 2010 murder that another man admitted to committing on Friday.
The list of things Lydell Grant missed in the more than seven years he spent behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit are seemingly endless.
The feeling of carpet between his toes.
The sensation of ice cold water running down his throat.
The variety of food choices a grocery store has to offer.
Grant, 43, can finally experience all those things and more as a free man.
“It’s a tremendous blessing to be home with my family,” Grant said during a Saturday press conference at his family’s home in the Bear Creek area. “I gotta thank God — if it wasn’t for God, who was on my side, who would know were I would be at.”
Grant was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for murdering Aaron Scheerhoorn, 28, two years prior outside a Montrose bar. But on Friday, authorities arrested a man who afterward confessed to the murders.
Grant had claimed he was innocent from the beginning. After the Innocence Project of Texas took up his case, the organization asked for a new DNA analysis, which later ruled Grant out as a suspect and matched the profile of another man with a criminal past.
Grant has been home since Thanksgiving on bond as detectives
re-investigated the case. The arrest Friday of 41-year-old Jermarico Carter in Georgia meant Grant’s ankle monitor could come off Saturday afternoon.
He said he doesn’t hold a grudge against the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.
“It was something that happened and I can’t whimper and whine about it,” Grant added. “I’m ready to move on and move forward with my life.”
Grant beamed Saturday as he pulled up his pant leg to reveal the lack of ankle monitor — he gets to celebrate Christmas without restrictions.
It’s something his mother, Donna Poe, is incredibly grateful for.
“He was the missing link,” Poe said. “We’re complete. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we’re going to have an amazing Christmas.”
Carter admitted to killing Scheerhoorn after his arrest and will face murder charges. He’s been in and out of jail across multiple states over the last 17 years on charges ranging from evading arrest, possession of cocaine and burglary of a habitation.
Grant still must be exonerated, which his attorneys are working toward now.
In the meantime, Grant told reporters that his future is so bright that it’s “blinding.”
He hopes to one day start his own film and production company.
But until then, he wants to work at a refinery in Baytown and hopes to get a car soon to make that a reality.
“2020 is a fresh beginning and it’s a new chapter in my life and I’m willing to start it off the right way,” Grant said.