A year after the body of Clements High School junior Ashton Glover was found in a shallow grave off Oilfield Road, a trial date has been set for two Clements seniors accused in her murder.

Sean Hutson Brown and Matthew Ross McCombs, Sugar Land neighbors who were both 18 at the time of Glover’s killing, face trial before Fort Bend County 400th District Court Judge Clifford Vacek in the first week of October, on first-degree murder charges.

Assistant Fort Bend County District Attorney Fred Felcman, who will prosecute the cases, said first-degree murder carries a penalty of from 5 to 99 years in prison. He said he could not comment on whether the two will face other charges.

Police say Glover, who died of a single gunshot wound to the head, was last seen alive at a coffee shop along Sugar Land’s Sweetwater Boulevard on the night of July 7, 2006, with McCombs and Brown.

According to interviews with several law enforcement sources including Fort Bend County Sheriff Milton Wright, Glover is believed to have gone willingly with Brown and McCombs in a four-wheel-drive pickup truck, ostensibly to go “mudding” in a field near Oilfield Road, south of Sugar Land.

Instead, the 16-year-old Sugar Land girl was shot in the head. Sheriff’s detectives say McCombs admitted that he fired the shot that killed her.

Sheriff Wright said in the summer of 2006 that the three Clements students had known each other for a long time. They had not been drinking, and there was no known fight or adversarial relationship between the girl and the two young men.

“When directly asked” why he did it, Wright said, McCombs replied “morbid curiousity.”

Investigators in the case have refused to discuss any motive behind the murder, beyond Sheriff Wright’s statement.

After the shooting, McCombs and Brown left Glover’s body in the field where she’d been shot, and drove to a restaurant. “They went and had breakfast, then they buried the body, then they went to bed,” Wright said.

On July 10, 2006, workers at a construction site found Glover’s body in a shallow grave.

About two hours later, police believe, McCombs was riding on a school bus, returning home from summer school classes. According to cell phone records, Brown called McCombs.

Witnesses told investigators McCombs got off the bus two blocks from his home and Brown was waiting for him in a black 1999 Dodge Ram 4-by-4 pickup truck believed to be owned by Brown’s father.

The pair fled to Port Huron, where they attempted to cross the border into Canada. Instead, they were detained by Canadian Customs agents and Ontario Provincial Police before they crossed onto Canadian soil.

McCombs waived extradition and was brought back to Fort Bend County in July 2006. Brown initially fought extradition but then waived it in August. Both men are being held without bond in the Fort Bend County Jail in Richmond.

In February of this year, a Houston business owner and Texas A&M University graduate donated $25,000 to establish a memorial scholarship in Ashton’s honor.

Set up by The Plank Companies Chief Executive Officer Michael Plank, the Ashton Glover Memorial Scholarship Fund will provide $1,250 to Texas A&M-bound Fort Bend school district graduates seeking a degree in agriculture, and who have participated in either 4-H or Future Farmers of America.

Plank said he decided to set up the scholarship fund after he and his wife learned it was Glover’s wish to attend Texas A&M and become a veterinarian.