Here are 8 times the Evansville area made national news in 2023
EVANSVILLE – “Active shooter inside Walmart West,” the tweet from Evansville police read. “Avoid the area!”
It was Jan. 19, a little before 10 p.m. According to frantic 911 calls, Ronald Ray Mosley II had just walked into his former workplace with a gun.
He moved to the employee breakroom, where the nightly shift meeting was about to begin. Police later said he ordered his former co-workers stand against the wall, telling two others to remain in the middle of the room. And that’s when he shot a 28-year-old woman in the face.
She ultimately survived and has spent a year recovering.
Mosley would go on to roam the store, randomly firing at others before EPD officers and Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s deputies arrived on scene. Body camera footage released in the aftermath shows heavily armed officers advancing through the aisles, just waiting for the shooter to appear around a corner.
The horror lasted about 15 minutes before Mosley was shot and killed. He reportedly left a suicide note at home.
It’s a scene that’s become terrifyingly common in the United States: a gunman stalking a public place that was once thought to be safe. And it was one of several Evansville-based incidents to make national news in 2023.
They ranged from tragic to positive to bizarre. Here are some that captured the nation’s attention.
Walmart shooting
Mosley had a history of attacking his former co-workers.
According to probable cause affidavits, he was charged with four counts of misdemeanor battery after police say he assaulted four people inside the store just before midnight on May 18, 2022.
An employee at the time, Mosley reportedly called a fellow co-worker a "snake." The co-worker told him to “grow up,” allegedly causing Mosley to punch the man in the face and throw him to the ground. He went on to punch multiple other employees as he moved from the salesfloor to the office and back again.
Mosely reportedly told police he’d had “issues” with people at work and “lost control.”
According to 911 audio on the night of the shooting, employees did everything they could to keep themselves and the shooting victim safe. They moved her from the breakroom, applied direct pressure to her wound, and pleaded with dispatchers to send an ambulance as fast as they could.
Others kept authorities up to date on the scene inside the store, even as they found places to hide. Some shooed would-be customers away from the door so they wouldn’t unknowingly wander into a dangerous scene.
Multiple national outlets reported on the shooting, lumping it together with the myriad incidents of gun violence that happen in this country every day.
The disappearance of Andi Wagner
Andi Wagner’s family hadn’t heard from her in almost a week.
So on Aug. 12, 2022, they called EPD and reported her missing. The 24-year-old white woman weighs about 115 pounds, they said, and was last seen wearing an orange tank top and jeans.
More than a year has passed since that day, but neither the family nor police are any closer to locating her. Multiple outlets – including Fox News, Nancy Grace and several YouTubers – have reported on the case.
The person pursuing it more than anyone, though, was Andi’s own mother.
After Wagner disappeared, Elane Garcia moved to Evansville from her previous home in Texas to aid in the search. She started a Facebook group, contacted the well-known firm Texas Equu Search, and investigated leads herself.
Garcia told the Courier & Press that Equu Search has fielded anonymous tips that point in the direction of Oakland City – about 40 minutes north of Evansville. An EPD report pertaining to Wagner’s disappearance also lists the names of several “additional” individuals with ties to the Oakland City area, but it doesn’t divulge how they might be connected to the investigation.
“She was a smart and bright young lady,” Garcia said about her daughter in 2022. “She is loved and missed by myself and her family in Evansville.”
‘Bad Romance’
The capture of nationally wanted fugitives Casey and Vicky White was one of the biggest stories in Evansville in 2022. And this year, it inspired a Lifetime movie.
“Bad Romance: The Vicky White Story” – starring “Reno 911” alum Wendi McLendon-Covey as Vicky and Rossif Sutherland, Donald Sutherland’s son, as Casey – premiered on the network on Oct. 21. It depicted Casey – convicted for attempted murderer – and Vicky – the Lauderdale County, Alabama jailer who helped him escape – as soul mates risking their freedom for love.
“There’s nothing wrong with you. There was never anything wrong with you,” Vicky says to Casey, a reportedly admitted killer, late in the movie. “You’ve just never been loved before.”
More: The stories you've never heard about Casey and Vicky White's time in Evansville. Here's Part 1.
Some portions of the movie at least partly adhere to real life. Casey did tell authorities he and Vicky were in love. He even had her name tattooed in cursive on his wrist.
The movie also shows them entering Indiana – the film never mentions Evansville by name – and spending several days at a motel, where they paid a homeless convicted sex offender to get them a room. It even shows them ordering pizza.
Other parts of the movie take a hard turn from reality. There’s a scene showing Casey waiting beside their truck in a car wash bay, which really did happen. The ensuing, pipe-laden confrontation with a BMW full of frat guys, though, is pure fiction.
Churchill Downs meet comes to Ellis. So do horse deaths
In six weeks this spring, Churchill Downs in Louisville saw 12 horse deaths. That included six in one week leading up to the 149th running of the Kentucky Derby.
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, one died in the paddock, one died during a race on the turf track, two died after turf races, and another died following a training session on the dirt track. The horses were euthanized, usually after sustaining injuries to their legs.
So in June, track officials announced they would temporarily suspend racing at the track and move their spring meet to Ellis Park in Henderson. They hoped the change of scenery would end the deaths and allow them to take a closer look at Churchill – even though multiple track surface experts said the racing ground was “consistent” with previous years, the Courier-Journal reported.
But the fatalities kept coming.
On June 24, 3-year-old gelding Im a Modest Man had just finished the eighth race of the day when the horse “appeared to suffer an injury near the 7/8pole,” a steward’s report with the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission read.
Modest was ultimately put down.
About a month later, on July 30, 3-year-old Holy Moly Abraham was “humanely euthanized” after sustaining “a catastrophic injury to his right foreleg,” another steward’s report read. The horse’s reaction to the injury knocked his jockey to the ground, and he ran another several feet before officials caught up with him.
Churchill Downs, which owns Ellis Park, never responded to the Courier & Press’ requests for comment.
Local animal rights group Evansville Animal Advocacy and national outfit Horseracing Wrongs protested the races in the wake of the animals’ deaths.
“Instead of blaming the tracks, the age of the horses, or the trainer, we need to blame horseracing itself and focus on ending it,” EvAA president Sandy Jey said in a news release. “How many more victims need to die before we put an end to this brutal ‘sport’?”
Walter McCarty settles lawsuit
After simmering in federal court for years, two lawsuits stemming from the University of Evansville’s firing of former men’s basketball coach Walter McCarty were finally settled.
The first lawsuit, filed in April 2021, came from a former student and UE athletics trainer identified in court documents only as Jane Doe. She said McCarty sexually assaulted her, and that UE failed to provide a safe environment.
After more than 140 court filings, the parties reached a settlement and the case was dismissed with prejudice on May 16, meaning the ruling is permanent. Terms were confidential and neither party has been willing to comment further.
The second originally came from McCarty himself. In December 2021, almost two years after his firing, he claimed UE owed him tens of thousands of dollars in performance-based incentives that were never paid out. McCarty was eventually replaced as the plaintiff in favor of John O. Desmond, a bankruptcy trustee.
McCarty had previously filed for bankruptcy.
A judge in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Indiana ruled in favor of UE in June, stating McCarty was not entitled to any bonuses beyond those already paid.
A murder with Evansville connections is profiled on NBC’s ‘Dateline’
Just like it did with the story of Halee Rathgeber in 2018, NBC’s “Dateline” profiled horrific killing with ties to the Evansville area.
This time the long-running true crime show tackled the death of Megan Nichols: a Fairfield High School cheerleader and athlete who vanished on July 3, 2014, less than two weeks before her 16th birthday.
According to her mother, Nichols allegedly left a note in her bedroom saying she would “never be happy at home,” NBC News reported.
Three years later, her remains were discovered in rural Wayne County. And two years after that, in October 2020, an arrest was finally made in the case when Evansville authorities apprehended then-24-year-old Brodey I. Murbarger outside his workplace, the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's office said at the time.
He was convicted of murder earlier this year and sentenced to 50 years in prison, Illinois Department of Corrections records state. An indictment by an Illinois grand jury accused Murbarger of strangling Nichols and burying her in a shallow grave.
Nichols was born in Evansville on July 18, 1998. Her obituary described her as an “energetic, happy young lady” who loved volleyball, playing in the school band and singing in show choir.
The stop of Kendra Owen
On Jan. 14, Gibson County woman and Uber driver Kendra Owen was working in the West Franklin Street bar district when she decided to take a break between fares.
She parked outside Fifth Third Bank on West Illinois Street sometime around 11 p.m. Not long after, EPD officer Matthew O. Taylor flashed his lights. He told her he was doing an “investigatory stop” because she was stopped near a bank.
There’s nothing illegal about that – something Owen pointed out in the federal lawsuit she filed against Taylor two months later, with representation from the Indiana chapter of the ACLU.
According to the complaint, EPD had flagged Owen in their system due to her previous work as a First Amendment Auditor: a growing collection of activists who film inside courthouses and other public buildings in efforts to expose lack of transparency in government.
Their actions are legal, but they often receive suspicion, anger and even arrests in return.
On the night of the stop, Owen chose to exit her car and have it impounded instead of providing her license and registration. That left her alone on the sidewalk on a cold night, forcing her to call a relative in Gibson County to pick her up.
The lawsuit accused Taylor of searching and impounding Owen’s car “without probable cause or reasonable suspicion.”
The suit was settled in August. Buddy Lobermann, the attorney for Taylor and the city of Evansville, told the Courier & Press then that “the (police) department and the city stand fully behind Officer Taylor.”
The city was prepared to defend Taylor in a trial until the possibility of a settlement arose, he said. He didn't provide specifics, but said the amount of the settlement was lower than what it would have cost to defend Taylor in a trial.
Traditional national news outlets didn’t leap on the story. YouTubers did.
The videos garnered hundreds of thousands of views and caused people from across the country to post angry comments on EPD Facebook posts for months on end.
Pangea Kitchen honored in Washington Post
In September, The Washington Post analyzed Yelp reviews to find the best types of pizza in each state. And an Evansville staple came out on top.
Pangea Kitchen was ranked first for Best Neapolitan (ish) pizza and second for Detroit-style pizza.
“There were tears,” owner Randy Hobson said. “There was a huge smile, there were actual goosebumps, and there were tears. Then I came over here to the restaurant, grabbed my manager Kory (Miller) and started crying again.”
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Here are 8 times the Evansville area made national news in 2023
