http://www.madville.com/link.php?id=93780&t=6
Hobart man dies testing bulletproof vest
Associated Press
February 12, 2005
HOBART, Ind. -- A man whose friends initially said he was killed by gunfire outside a Gary liquor store actually died after he donned what he thought was a bulletproof vest and asked a cohort to shoot him.
A friend then shot Daniel Wright with a .20-gauge shotgun, but it turned out the vest Wright had put on Thursday was a flak jacket not designed to stop a bullet.
Wright, 20, was mortally wounded in the shooting and died later at a Gary hospital after two of his friends drove him there.
Three Hobart men who are now charged in the Crown Point man's shooting death said they concocted the story that he was murdered by a stranger outside a Gary liquor store in a panic after the Wright unexpectedly died.
Hobart police Lt. Leo Finnerty said Friday that Wright was going to join the military and wanted some battlefield experience.
So he went to a field in Hobart with his friends, donned what he thought was a bulletproof vest, and then told them: "Shoot me. I'm ready."
"He voluntarily put on the vest because he wanted to experience what a .20-gauge shotgun would do," Finnerty told the Post-Tribune of Merrillville.
The Lake County coroner's office said the plastic cartridge fired from the shotgun's blast pierced Wright's chest and some shotgun pellets ripped into his heart.
Robert Lee Stottlemire, 20, of Hobart was charged with reckless homicide for allegedly shooting Wright in the chest from a distance of between 3 to 6 feet.
Two other Hobart men, Brock Bieker, 19, and Michael J. Searle, 18, are charged with assisting Stottlemire by concealing the homicide.
Bieker and Searle also are charged with giving Gary police false information, a misdemeanor.
Hobart police said that after Wright was mortally shot, Searle reloaded the shotgun and fired a round into the windshield of the car they were driving to make their story of the shooting outside the liquor store more believable.
But Gary Police Detective Thomas Decanter said the story started to fall apart as soon as he began questioning the pair at a Gary hospital.
Sixteen hours after the shooting, a fourth man who witnessed the shooting but ran off after Wright fell to the ground walked into the Hobart police station with his parents and told the actual story of the shooting.
