Danville Man’s Warning Before Courthouse Shooting
DANVILLE, Ind — Neighbors of the man killed in a police shooting Monday outside the Hendricks County Courthouse say they had a troubling conversation with him just two weeks earlier.
Dennis and Charlotte Wagoner told WISH-TV that 65-year-old Mark Vawter told them, “I don’t have long to live.”
“It didn’t mean anything to me,” said Dennis Wagoner. “I just thought maybe he was confused or something, the way he put it. It’s kind of spooky now.”
The couple said they didn’t think much of it at the time, believing Vawter might have been referring to his previous health problems.
Indiana State Police have not released a possible motive for why Vawter pulled out a gun and fired at a group of inmates outside the courthouse in downtown Danville. Deputies were escorting the inmates inside just before 1 p.m. Monday when the shooting happened.
Vawter’s family told I-Team 8 he was the great-grandfather of two children killed in a car crash in Plainfield in early February.
Dennis Wagoner said, “Neither of us realized those kids were related to him — the misery he was going through, we didn’t really realize he was going through it.”
S’Doni Pettis faces eight felony charges in connection with the crash. Court records show he had been scheduled to appear in a Hendricks County courtroom at 1 p.m. Monday. However, that hearing was rescheduled three days earlier for early June.
“I think he was planning it,” Charlotte Wagoner said. “To go over there to the courthouse and take out that guy who took out his grandkids.”
