File photo: Timothy K. Sprague from January arrest
A Gainesville man, 31-year-old Timothy K. Sprague, has been charged with murder and kidnapping in connection with an Ozark County man’s reported gunshot death last week.
Online court documents indicate Sprague faces nine felony charges related to the fatal incident, including second-degree murder in the death of 28-year-old Kameron Shane Stilwell.
The West Plains Daily Quill reports the two kidnapping charges were filed after Sprague allegedly forced two women who witnessed the crime to accompany him to Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Sprague is also charged with one count each of first-degree robbery, unlawful possession of a firearm and abandonment of a corpse and three counts of armed criminal action, according to court records.
The investigation began with the report of a deceased man found last Wednesday at a home on County Road 850, northwest of Gainesville. Deputies with the Ozark County Sheriff’s Department responded to find Stilwell dead of apparent gunshot wounds.
Sprague was taken into custody Thursday in West Siloam Springs, Oklahoma., and held on an active Ozark County warrant for failure to appear on charges of unlawful possession of a firearm, delivery of a controlled substance and third-degree domestic assault.
Court records also show Sprague pleaded guilty in 2011 to two counts of first-degree endangering the welfare of a child and was sentenced to five years in prison. As a convicted felon, he is barred from possessing a firearm.
In a statement issued Friday by Ozark County Sheriff Darrin Reed, it was revealed Sprague had been located by using a cellphone location technique known as “pinging.”
According to the probable cause affidavit, Ozark County Sheriff’s Department Corporal Curtis Dobbs said he observed what appeared to be blood surrounding Stillwell’s body and what appeared to be three bullet wounds in Stillwell’s upper back area. The wounds were from what appeared to be a medium-caliber projectile. He noted no shell casings were found at the scene.
Dobbs also stated he knew Stillwell had recently been in a romantic relationship with a woman who lived at the home where the body was found, but was informed by a witness she was in a current relationship with Sprague. Dobbs reported the woman and a second female were with Sprague at the time of his arrest.
In an interview with Dobbs both women reportedly stated that for several days leading up to the incident, both had been with Sprague, either at his parents’ house in Gainesville or at Sprague’s current girlfriend’s house, where Stillwell’s body was found.
The women reportedly said that during that time, Sprague told them they were “his property” and threatened them with physical violence, if they tried to leave. The morning of the shooting, Sprague and the two women were allegedly at the home on County Road 850 when Stillwell arrived, banging on the door and yelling for his former girlfriend, the homeowner, to come talk to him. After she refused and told Stillwell to leave, he reportedly kicked in some boards nailed over a window and began to enter, armed with a handgun.
According to the witnesses, Sprague was also in the house, armed with a .38-caliber handgun, and standing near the room Stillwell was entering. Both women said they heard a single gunshot, followed by several more in rapid succession, and after they entered the room, they tried to render aid to Stilwell. It was then that Sprague allegedly pointed his gun at them and told them to leave Stillwell alone and reportedly threatened to shoot his girlfriend when she said she was going to call 911.
At the alleged instruction of Sprague, the two women brought his car to the front of the house, and one of them removed shell casings from a trash can where he had placed them. Sprague then reportedly put on a pair of gloves and came out of the house with items including a billfold, a credit card and cigarettes he said he had taken from Stillwell’s body, plus a semi-automatic pistol the victim brought with him to the location.
The women told Dobbs the three of them left the location, and Sprague threatened to kill them and dispose of their bodies, if they didn’t go with him.
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