On the night of January 15, 2019, a domestic dispute in a Springfield, Missouri residence turned tragic. Police officers were dispatched to a home located at 911 West Locust Street shortly before 1:00 a.m. following a distressing call to emergency services. The caller, identified as a resident of the home, reported that a person had been shot. Upon arrival, first responders discovered the lifeless body of 20-year-old female Cheyenne Dancause inside the house.
She had suffered a single, fatal gunshot wound. In the same room where the shooting occurred, authorities found two uninjured infants, one of whom was the victim's daughter while the other was the child of a friend.
The investigation immediately focused on the man who had placed the 911 call, Chase E. Collins, who was identified as the victim's boyfriend. Collins told dispatchers and responding officers that the shooting was an accident that occurred while the couple was arguing. According to court documents later filed in the case, the confrontation began over difficulties in getting the two babies to sleep. Collins admitted to detectives that he had become very angry during the struggle. He initially claimed that he and Dancause were flailing their arms when the weapon discharged, later altering his account to suggest that both of them were holding the firearm when it went off.
Law enforcement arrested Collins at the scene, and he was subsequently booked into the Greene County Jail. Prosecutors initially charged him with second-degree murder, and he was held on a $250,000 bond. The case proceeded to trial roughly a year later. However, on the second day of court proceedings in February 2020, the trial took an unexpected turn. Collins decided to accept a plea agreement, admitting guilt to a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter rather than risking a conviction on the murder charge.
Following his guilty plea, the court handed down a sentence for the death of Cheyenne Dancause. Chase Collins was ordered to serve ten years in the Missouri Department of Corrections. The resolution brought a legal close to the violent night that left a young mother dead and two infants witnesses to a fatal altercation, though they physically survived the incident unharmed.
