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A father and son who were first charged with accessory to murder pleaded guilty to misdemeanors in Jones County Circuit Court after cooperating with investigators, the prosecutor told the judge.

Clifton Keyes, 47, and Javeryion Dixon, 23, both of Laurel, pleaded guilty to obstruction and received six-month suspended sentences and $500 fines. The father and son were charged with being accessories to murder in the shooting death of Jordan Heinhuis, 33, of Houma, La., in South Park Village in October 2020. They helped the shooter — Keyes’ other son and Dixon’s brother Jadarius Keyes, 19 — hide the murder weapon.

A series of Facebook inbox messages implicated them, Assistant District Attorney Katie Sumrall said.

But the pair ultimately helped investigators with the Laurel Police Department locate the .38-caliber handgun that was used in the deadly shooting at the housing project off Johnson Circle. Neither was at the scene of the shooting and the “principals” in the incident have pleaded guilty and been sentenced to time in prison, Sumrall pointed out.

In November, Jadarius Keyes was ordered to serve 25 years in the full-time custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections after pleading guilty to second-degree murder and Kendaryious Oliver, 19, was ordered to serve 10 years after pleading guilty to accessory after the fact of murder. Both were initially charged with capital murder in the case and would have faced the death penalty had they gone to trial.

“What happened that night was shameful,” Judge Dal Williamson told the father and son defendants. “That’s a good way to get thrown in the penitentiary. I’m only going along with this because the principals are paying the penalty for this crime.”

Clifton Keyes was in jail for four days and Dixon was in the Jones County Adult Detention Center for 110 days. Dixon had been in jail since May after the judge issued a bench warrant for Dixon’s failure to appear in court on the accessory charge. When the Jones County Sheriff’s Department put his mugshot on Facebook asking for the public’s help finding him, Dixon posted a “laughing emoji” on the page ... but deputies got the last laugh, cuffing him and jailing him a day later after a short footchase.

Clifton Keyes wound up back behind bars again, though, for failing to meet the requirements of his plea in a 2016 auto burglary case. He was represented by attorney John Piazza and Dixon was represented by public defender Matt Sherman.

Heinhuis and his girlfriend Starr Leger, 31, were on their way home to Louisiana from Tennessee when they got “dope sick,” Sumrall told the court at the shooter’s plea hearing. They tried to find heroin in Meridian first but were unsuccessful, so they pulled off Interstate 59 in Laurel at the Townhouse Motel, saw Keyes in the parking lot and they all wound up going to South Park Village together, where the dope deal turned deadly.

Oliver, who is Keyes’ cousin, admitted to being at the scene at the time of the shooting, but he told investigators that he took off running when he heard the shots. He did, however, have Facebook inbox messages that showed him planning with others to meet at a residence on 1st Avenue to spend the night to figure out what to do with the weapons. The .38-caliber that was believed to have been used in the shooting was recovered, but no slugs from the weapon were found in the body.

Oliver was a junior honor-roll student at Laurel High at the time of the crime.

“This may not have been a sympathetic victim,” Sumrall said of Heinhuis at the time, “but he didn’t deserve to die.”

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