3+ years after a Tri-Cities teen was killed at home, his accused murderer appears in court
A Tri-Cities family is hoping for closure, as the suspected gunman of a Kennewick teen in 2018 made his first court appearance on Wednesday.
Lawrence Isaiah Groce, 23, pleaded innocent during an initial appearance in Benton County Superior Court for the killing of Hunter Black, in what appeared to be a robbery gone wrong.
He is being held in the Benton County jail on $1 million bail. His trial was set for July 11.
Groce allegedly worked with two fellow gang members on the plan to break into a home and rob Black, who had been involved in illegal activities to make money, according to court documents.
Black died after being shot in the chest.
Police say Groce’s DNA linked him to a shotgun left behind at the Yelm Street home.
But it wasn’t until three years later that Groce was arrested in April in King County after people in two vehicles were shooting at each other on Interstate 5 near the I-405 interchange.
2018 home invasion
Black lived in the Yelm Street home with his pregnant girlfriend, Cynarra Scott, and another couple.
At the time, Scott woke up to hear Black shouting at two masked men standing in the doorway. Then one of them shot Black.
A roommate punched one intruder and tried to grab another, but the attackers got away, leaving behind the shotgun that killed Black. The gun was linked to one of Groce’s alleged conspirators in the robbery.
Investigators were told that Groce and Kavonte “KC” Conley were the men in Black’s doorway.
Washington State Patrol Crime Laboratory technicians found DNA on the spent shell inside the gun. They were able to rule out the two others allegedly involved.
They got a sample of Groce’s DNA in December 2020 and linked it to him, say court documents.
The WSP crime report says the DNA profile is 7.4 decillion times more likely to have come from Groce than a random individual. A decillion is a one followed by 33 zeroes.
‘Peace, justice and closure’
Shortly after Groce’s arrest, Black’s half-sister, Dalyn Larsen, said she was grateful an arrest had been made more than three years after Black’s death.
The murder had impacted so many including Black’s young son, who was born months after the murder. She hoped they could rest easier now that an arrest had been made.
“I have some mixed emotions about things, but am glad to finally have a face and a name for the person who very likely killed my brother,” Larsen said. “I am eager for peace, justice and closure in this horrible situation.”
Larsen and Scott told the Herald in 2019 that Black was an excited father-to-be who planned to turn his life around for his child.
He was a Colorado state wrestling champion, had a beautiful singing voice and had a knack for making friends. But underneath his talent and charm was a man who grew up without a father and had a mother who struggled with drug addiction. And he ended up getting in trouble.
He was on probation when he moved to the Tri-Cities in 2017 with the plan to turn his life around and was doing well at first.
But as he started to become more independent, he fell in with a bad crowd.
“He had a lot of good goals, but the allure of fast money is what really pulled him in. He got addicted to the fast money,” Larsen said at the time.
Even in his criminal activity, Larsen and Scott said he still stayed away from violence, and wasn’t a gang member. His catchphrase was, “Love and Hope” not “Love and Hate,” they told the Herald.