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Forensicwx

Final Roll Call 4153. STLCO 10-42 10/13 @ 1519
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An 84 year-old woman was sitting on the back porch of her St Louis County home enjoying a relaxing Friday afternoon with her husband of more than six decades when she was struck by a bullet and killed.

Police and first responders who arrived on the scene in the 5000 block of Crosswood Drive in Oakville, Missouri, found Betty Lou Knight dead on the terrace.

Her husband, Dale Knight, told detectives that he heard what he believed to be a gunshot at around 3.30pm and then noticed his wife bleeding profusely from the neck.

Police have found no signs of a home invasion, and Sgt. Brian Schellman told the St Louis Post-Dispatch Sunday Mr Knight is not a suspect in his wife’s death.

Investigators say they don't know at this point whether Mrs Knight, a mother and grandmother of nine, was killed by a stray bullet, or whether she was the unidentified gunman’s intended target.

The victim's daughter, Cindy Johnson, 59, told the paper her octogenarian mother had no enemies.

Neighbors say the subdivision of Oakville, where the Dales lived, is considered a very low-crime area.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-high-school-sweetheart-husband-65-years.html

http://m.stltoday.com/news/local/cr...5f12-9af7-5024a0941f7c.html?mobile_touch=true

She got a tiny ladybug tattoo 15 years ago and sometimes wore a shirt to let it show. <3
 
How fucking sad!

She died on her porch, from a bullet wound to the neck. BIRD WATCHING. With her high school sweetheart, turned husband of 65 years! :bigtears:

65 years is a long, long time! Especially to have it end so senselessly. Dammit. :(
 
Why is it that it's always an infant, a child, an innocent person that dies like that. It's never ever someone who seemingly deserves such a fate.
 
WTF. What are the odds of a stray bullet in a low-crime area that hits a low-risk victim. SOMETHING stinks here and it's not the ben-gay
 
May 15, 2016

The family of an 84-year-old South County woman struck and killed by a bullet as she sat on her back porch has settled a lawsuit with a neighbor over her death.

St. Louis County Circuit Judge Nellie Ribaudo on Friday approved a $100,000 settlement for the family of Betty Lou Knight, who died in June when a bullet hit her in the neck as she sat with her husband of 65 years on their back porch.

Raymond O. Bodicky’s insurance policy will pay the settlement to Knight’s 86-year-old husband, Dale Knight, and their three children. They accused Bodicky, their neighbor, of “negligently and carelessly” killing Betty Knight by shooting a gun across private property, in violation of county ordinance and state law.

Police said Bodicky was their only suspect in the shooting but prosecutors never charged him with a crime, citing the need for more evidence.

During the investigation, Bodicky acknowledged to police that he routinely shot squirrels in his backyard and fired at one near his bird feeder with a pellet rifle on the same afternoon Betty Knight was killed.

But he denied using any weapon except a pellet rifle, saying it was “too dangerous” and that the neighborhood was “not that type of area … where people shoot their neighbors.”

Bodicky did not attend Friday’s settlement hearing in St. Louis County Circuit Court. He could not be reached, and his lawyer declined to comment. Court records say Bodicky is a retired widower with no criminal history in Missouri. He is retired from a medical and surgical device maker in downtown St. Louis.

Dale Knight was sitting beside his wife when a round from a .22-caliber gun struck her neck about 3:50 p.m. June 26, police have said. The Knights’ home is in the 5000 block of Crosswood Drive, in the Sandalwood subdivision in south St. Louis County.

The backyards of Crosswood Drive touch those of the 5000 block of Lampglow Court, where Bodicky lives.

The round punctured a half-wall on the covered back porch, flew past Dale Knight and struck his wife as she used an iPad. Police said the gun that fired the fatal shot has never been found, and that tests comparing the bullet to ammunition in Bodicky’s home were inconclusive.

Neighbors told police that squirrels had become invasive pests in the neighborhood, attacking gardens, building nests and chewing on roofs. Bodicky told police they had ruined his tomato garden and a tree.

Police found inconsistencies in Bodicky’s statements about the angle from which he shot his pellet gun on the day Betty Knight was killed. When asked to explain, he told police “he did not want to get into trouble for shooting at the squirrels.” Bodicky also said “it would be magic if anything came back” to one of his guns,” and that, “Hopefully, it doesn’t come back on me.”

Johnson and her sister, Gay Turner, said after the settlement hearing that their father still wakes up at night looking for his wife. They said he is suffering from deepening dementia, depression and “cries at the drop of a hat.” They said he still finds comfort in watching his wife’s flowers bloom and birds in the backyard but that they still remind him of what happened.

The lawsuit would not have been necessary if Bodicky had acknowledged early on firing the gun and apologizing to her family, Johnson said.

“It would have been nice to hear, ‘I’m sorry,’” she said.

http://www.kttn.com/judge-oks-100000-settlement-in-fatal-shooting-of-84-year-old-missouri-woman/
 
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