Bathroom break leads to deadly property dispute (MUGSHOT)
Posted by: Jon Ben-Mayor on 07/23/2013 06:11 AM
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An annual family float trip down the Meramec river in Missouri turns deadly after the floaters stop at a gravel bar for a restroom break.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a group of family and friends on an annual float trip stopped at a gravel bar in the Meramec on Saturday afternoon to refresh drinks and answer the call of nature, according to Loretta Dart, who was on the trip. Her cousin went into the woods to urinate.
In doing so, he apparently ignited the ire of a property owner along the river fed up with people traipsing on his property. James Robert Crocker, 59, confronted the group with a 9 mm handgun, and in an altercation over property rights that rapidly escalated to gunfire, fatally shot Dart’s husband in the head from a few feet away, authorities say.
Paul Franklin Dart, 48, of Robertsville, died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, less than five hours after setting out on a leisurely float along the river. An Army veteran and a union carpenter, he had married Loretta Dart about two years ago.
“I watched him be shot in the face and fall down,” she sobbed in a telephone interview Monday. “I watched my husband bleed to death. He was a wonderful man. He didn’t deserve this.”
Crocker told police the shooting came as the culmination of a dispute over whether the group was trespassing or not, and he fired after a man approached him with rocks in his hands. Paul Dart wasn’t the one with the rocks.
“I just shot the one closest to me,” Crocker said, according to police.
Authorities on Sunday charged Crocker with second-degree murder. He was being held Monday in lieu of $650,000 bail at the Crawford County Jail.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch a group of family and friends on an annual float trip stopped at a gravel bar in the Meramec on Saturday afternoon to refresh drinks and answer the call of nature, according to Loretta Dart, who was on the trip. Her cousin went into the woods to urinate.In doing so, he apparently ignited the ire of a property owner along the river fed up with people traipsing on his property. James Robert Crocker, 59, confronted the group with a 9 mm handgun, and in an altercation over property rights that rapidly escalated to gunfire, fatally shot Dart’s husband in the head from a few feet away, authorities say.
Paul Franklin Dart, 48, of Robertsville, died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, less than five hours after setting out on a leisurely float along the river. An Army veteran and a union carpenter, he had married Loretta Dart about two years ago.
“I watched him be shot in the face and fall down,” she sobbed in a telephone interview Monday. “I watched my husband bleed to death. He was a wonderful man. He didn’t deserve this.”
Crocker told police the shooting came as the culmination of a dispute over whether the group was trespassing or not, and he fired after a man approached him with rocks in his hands. Paul Dart wasn’t the one with the rocks.
“I just shot the one closest to me,” Crocker said, according to police.
Authorities on Sunday charged Crocker with second-degree murder. He was being held Monday in lieu of $650,000 bail at the Crawford County Jail.
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