The third of five suspects in a Jan. 4 murder has been bound over to a grand jury, after a hearing Monday.

Tyler Michael Abbott, 16, according to his attorney, was the first person arrested in the shooting death of Aaron Joe “A.J.” Huff last month at the intersection of Litchfield Avenue and Hoke Street.

Testifying in the preliminary hearing Monday, Gadsden police Det. Autumn Dickson said witnesses in the van with Huff the night of the shooting told her Huff had been communicating with Abbott through Facebook Messenger. They were to meet, so that Huff could sell marijuana, presumably to Abbott.

However, Dickson said Abbott said Kalab Whitworth, 16, had asked him to contact Huff to “set him up for a lick — a robbery.” Abbott was to receive some of the marijuana they would take from Huff.

Abbott told the detective Whitworth was telling him what to message to Huff, and that Abbott was at his father’s home in Cullman — nowhere near the scene of the crime.

Dickson testified that Abbott had some trouble getting messages from Whitworth and was “winging it” for a while to get Huff and six others in a van to wait at Starnes Park until the customers showed up.

Four young men in a black Chevrolet Impala did arrive, Dickson testified during the course of Monday’s hearing and a prior preliminary hearing for other suspects. Driver Jessie James Altman, 17, Broderick Pearson, 18, Whitworth and Lonterry Harrison Jr., 17, were in the vehicle, and all are now charged, as Abbott is, with capital murder.

When the two groups met for the drug deal at Starnes Park, no one from either vehicle would get out to complete the deal. Each motioned to the other to approach their vehicle, Dickson said witnesses told her, but neither would.

Huff and his group of friends pulled away and the suspects followed to the intersection of Litchfield Avenue and Hoke Street. Some of the people in the car got out and approached the passenger side of the van, where Huff was seated, and one of them opened fire, striking and fatally wounded Huff.

When witnesses provided Abbott’s name, detectives went to his high school and got him out of class to question him, according to attorney Shaun Malone, who, along with Paul Roberts, represents Abbott.

In requesting that bond be set for their client, Malone and Roberts pointed out his age.

Malone said Abbott was the “least culpable” of the defendants in the case — that he was not there, and there’d been nothing to indicate he knew any harm would come to Huff.

Etowah County Deputy District Attorney Brynn Crain disagreed.

“He set the whole thing up,” Crain told Circuit Judge George Day. “He kept him there,” he said until the co-defendants arrived to carry out the robbery.

When Whitworth contacted Abbott about setting up the drug deal, he asked “You aren’t going to kill the dude, are you?” Dickson said, according to Abbott’s written statement. She didn’t know what Whitworth’s response was.

“The defendant is young. They are all young; the witnesses are young,” Crain said. “The victim was just a 16-year-old boy also.” The crime altered many young lives forever, he said, and it ended Huff’s.

Roberts said Abbott wants to be able to return to school, and that defense attorneys have received calls from Cullman High School, asking when he would be back.

Malone said the sheriff’s office is working on a way that Abbott can continue his classes while in jail.

However, he and Roberts asked that bond be set so Abbott can get back to class. Roberts said there are ways to monitor defendants through cellphones with GPS tracking, with the defendant checking in through voice recognition application.

“Community Corrections can monitor in real time,” he said, and could give permission for the defendant to do certain things, such as, “if he wants to go to church.”

Day said he will take the bond request under advisement.

He did so with defendants Pearson and Whitworth, and issued orders Sunday denying their requests for bond.