On a cold winter day in Ottumwa, Iowa, the life of a young man was tragically cut short. Roger Alan Wiseman Jr., a 25-year-old Caucasian male, was found in the street with multiple gunshot wounds on January 4, 2015. He was rushed to the Ottumwa Regional Health Center, where he succumbed to his injuries.
The investigation into Wiseman's death quickly pointed to a dispute over a dog. Authorities identified 24-year-old Dustin William McDanel as the suspect.
The two men had been arguing over the ownership of a dog, a disagreement that escalated with fatal consequences. Prior to the confrontation, McDanel had sent a message indicating he had found his dog and was “going to shoot” someone. This message, coupled with the fact that Wiseman was unarmed at the time of the shooting, would later become a crucial point in the legal proceedings.
Following the shooting, McDanel fled the area, sparking a manhunt. He was apprehended on January 23, 2015, in Richmond Heights, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Law enforcement found him hiding under a bed in a home. At the time of the shooting, McDanel was already wanted for having escaped from a halfway house in Ottumwa in October 2014, where he was serving a sentence for marijuana charges.
McDanel was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Roger Wiseman Jr. His legal team initially planned to argue self-defense. However, facing a strong case from the prosecution, McDanel ultimately accepted a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter as a habitual offender, flight to avoid prosecution as a habitual offender, and felon in possession of a firearm as a habitual offender. He received a seventy-year prison sentence with a mandatory minimum of twenty-six-and-a-half years.
