Man had troubling conversations with neighbors before police shooting
DANVILLE, Ind. (WISH) — Neighbors of the man killed in a police shooting Monday outside the Hendricks County Courthouse told I-Team 8 they had a troubling conversation with him just two weeks ago.
Dennis and Charlotte Wagoner said 65-year-old Mark Vawter told them he didn’t have long to live.
Dennis Wagoner said, “It didn’t mean anything to me. I just thought maybe he was confused or something. The way he put it. It’s kind of spooky now.”
The Wagoners didn’t think anything of it because Vawter had previously had health problems.
Indiana State Police have not released any possible motive for why Vawter pulled a gun and opened fire at inmates. Sheriff’s deputies were walking the inmates into the Hendricks County Courthouse in downtown Danville just before 1 p.m. Monday.
Vawter’s family told I-Team that he’s the great grandfather of two children killed in a car crash in Plainfield in early February.
Dennis Wagoner said, “Neither of us realized that those two kids had been related to him. The misery he was going through, that we didn’t really realize he was going through.”
S’Doni Pettis is charged with 8 felonies in connection to the crash. According to court records, he had been scheduled to have a court hearing in a Hendricks County court at 1 p.m. Monday, but, three days earlier, that hearing was rescheduled for early June.
Charlotte Wagoner said, “I think that he was planning it, to go over there at the Courthouse and take out that guy who took out his grandkids.”
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