By Chris Boyette, Josh Campbell, CNN

(CNN) — A third person has been arrested on suspicion of helping a fugitive accused of killing four relatives of a Tennessee baby who was found abandoned alive last week, authorities said Monday.

Meanwhile, authorities were scouring a wooded area near a private university in Jackson, Tennessee, on Monday afternoon as part of the investigation into the suspect in the killings, 28-year-old Austin Robert Drummond, a law enforcement source familiar said.

As for the latest arrest: Dearrah Sanders, 23, was taken into custody Monday on warrants charging her with accessory after the fact to first-degree murder, accused of assisting Drummond after the killings of the baby’s relatives, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said. Sanders will be booked into the Lake County Jail, the TBI said, and it is unclear if she has obtained an attorney.

The same charges were also filed last week against Tanaka Brown and Giovontie Thomas, both 29. Brown is also charged with tampering with evidence, according to the TBI. Authorities have not specified precisely what the three are accused of doing to help Drummond.

Drummond remains on the lam, but authorities investigating the case were searching a wooded area Monday near Union University in Jackson – the same western Tennessee city where authorities say a vehicle associated with him was found unoccupied last week. At the request of police, the university locked exterior doors to all buildings, university spokesperson Tim Ellsworth said Monday afternoon.

A private school less than a mile from the university – Jackson Christian School – was on lockdown Monday afternoon, a receptionist told CNN. Because the school year starts Thursday, teachers, but not students, were at the school, which covers pre-K through grade 12.

Drummond is sought in connection with the deaths of James M. Wilson, 21; Adrianna Williams, 20; Cortney Rose, 38; and Braydon Williams, 15, whose bodies were found July 29 in Tiptonville, a town in northwest Tennessee’s Lake County, the TBI said.

The four were found dead hours after the baby daughter of Wilson and Adrianna Williams was found abandoned on the afternoon of July 29 in a car seat in a “random” front yard near the Dyer County community of Tigrett, nearly a 40-mile drive southeast of Tiptonville, authorities had said.

Jackson is about 45 miles southeast of Tigrett. A second vehicle sought in the hunt for Drummond, a 1988 white Ford pickup truck with a red stripe, was located in Dyer County, the TBI said Saturday.

The TBI hasn’t said what led it to name Drummond as a suspect, or whether investigators know of a motive in the killings or why the baby was abandoned a county away from where the bodies were found.

Rose was the baby’s maternal grandmother, and Braydon Williams was the baby’s maternal uncle, according to Danny Goodman, district attorney for Dyer and Lake counties.

“The victims were all from Dyer County, and we suspect the person that killed them knew all of them,” Goodman, who also confirmed Wilson and Adrianna Williams were the baby’s parents, told CNN last week.

Warrants for Drummond have been issued charging him with four counts of first-degree murder, one count of aggravated kidnapping, four counts of felon in possession of a firearm and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony, the TBI said.

The US Marshals Service and TBI announced a joint $17,500 reward for any information leading to Drummond’s arrest.

Drummond was out on bail on attempted murder charge and served years in prison

Drummond had a criminal history, had just gotten out of prison last year, and at the time of this month’s killings was out on bail after being charged with trying to kill someone while he was incarcerated, authorities have said.

His criminal history dates to July 2013, when authorities said the then-16-year-old robbed a Circle K convenience store in Jackson just after midnight. Drummond pulled out a pistol, pointed it at a store employee and demanded the money in the cash register, according to court documents.

He made off with about $45, but investigators matched a fingerprint left on the scene to Drummond, court documents say. He was convicted in 2014 of aggravated robbery and sentenced to 10 years in prison, records show.

After the trial, an incarcerated Drummond called his father and made threats against the jurors and the robbery victim, District Attorney Jody S. Pickens, who serves an area including Madison County, told CNN on Monday. For that, Drummond in 2015 pleaded guilty to several counts of retaliation for past action and was sentenced to a further three years in prison, according to Pickens and court records.

?CNN has reached out to an attorney who was representing him at the time for comment.

Drummond was scheduled for a parole hearing on July 23, 2020, but Pickens’ office sent a letter to the Tennessee Board of Parole saying it strongly opposed parole, calling Drummond a “dangerous felony offender.”

According to that letter, the statements Drummond made about the juror and the robbery victim from jail years earlier were “they are going to regret it” and “I’ll be out one day.” Pickens also wrote that Drummond, as of July 2020, had 25 disciplinary actions against him, including “refusing orders, drug possession, defiance, and being in possession of a deadly weapon.”

“?This type of behavior clearly demonstrates that Drummond has no desire for rehabilitation and is not capable of living among society,” Pickens wrote. “Due to the seriousness of the crimes he committed, his violent behavior towards the victims in these cases and to protect society from his criminal behavior, we feel that he should remain in prison and serve his sentence in full.”

He did not receive parole then, but was released last September from Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville after serving mandated portions of his sentence, according to Goodman, the district attorney for Dyer and Lake counties.

Yet a Lake County grand jury indicted him on several charges relating to his time in prison – first drug charges, and then attempted murder, Goodman said in a news conference Friday. According to records released by the TBI, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office arrested Drummond on the drug charges September 1 – the day he was released from prison – and the attempted murder charge later that year.

“He made bond,” and he was “out on bond on those charges” when the four bodies were found last week in Tiptonville, Goodman said Friday.

?Goodman didn’t provide details about the attempted murder charge, except to say the alleged incident “took place inside the prison.” CNN has asked Goodman for further details about that charge.

Drummond’s attorney in the attempted murder case, Drew Farmer, declined to comment on details in that case, and would not say whether he was representing Drummond in the charges related to last week’s killings.

“Like everyone else following this story, I am saddened by the loss of life and the effects of that loss on those left behind,” Farmer wrote in an email to CNN Monday.

Baby found abandoned hours before bodies discovered

The most recent investigation into Drummond began July 29 when the baby was found in a car seat in a front yard near Tigrett, the Dyer County Sheriff’s Office said.

Investigators, spurred by a 911 caller who saw the child, were checking reports that a “dark-colored minivan or a white mid-size SUV” had left the baby there, the sheriff’s office said; the heat index was 116 degrees. The baby girl is approximately 7 months old, Goodman said.

?Hours after the baby’s abandonment, the sheriff’s office announced four people – later identified as the baby’s relatives – were found dead in Tiptonville.

The bodies were found Tuesday along Tiptonville’s Carrington Road, the TBI said without elaborating.

When contacted by CNN with questions about the investigation, the TBI referred only to its news releases. The releases do not detail how the four were killed, how they were found, whether investigators know of a motive, or who may have left the baby in the yard near Tigrett.

This story was updated with updated information.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Giovontie Thomas’ first name.

CNN’s Cindy Von Quednow and Lily Hautau contributed to this report.

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