Dusty Wheeler (Photo courtesy of Baxter County Sheriff’s Office)
A Mountain Home man charged with first-degree murder appeared in Baxter County Circuit Court Monday.
Forty-four-year-old Dusty Shane Wheeler’s attorney asked that his client’s current $1 million bond be lowered.
Circuit Judge John Putman reduced the bond to $500,000. He also added a number of conditions, including putting Wheeler on house arrest, requiring he wear an ankle monitor, prohibiting contact with members of the victim’s family and requiring he not drink alcoholic beverages.
Judge Putman told Wheeler that a violation of any of the conditions would mean he would go back to jail.
Wheeler said if he bonded out, he would be living with his mother in the Batesville area.
The state opposed lowering the bond.
Members of the victim’s family were in the courtroom for the bond hearing, and some became emotional after Judge Putman announced his decision on the bond.
Wheeler was arrested June 14 when Mountain Home police were called to a residence along Sunny Ann Lane about 6 a.m. and found a woman sitting in a lawn chair outside the house.
The victim, identified as 36-year-old Heather Bradford, was reported to be cold and showing no cardiac rhythm when Baxter Health EMTs arrived on scene.
Bradford was reported to have been shot in the head. An entry wound was found on the top left side of the victim’s head behind her ear and an exit wound located on the bottom right side behind the ear.
The victim’s body was sent to the Arkansas State Medical Examiner’s Office in Little Rock for an autopsy.
Wheeler was found inside the house he shared with Bradford asleep on the living room couch. He was detained and taken to a Mountain Home Police patrol car.
The victims’ parents had come to the home in response to a phone call they received from their daughter. Bradford is alleged to have told them that she and Wheeler had been fighting, and he had struck her in the face.
A bullet casing was found in the driveway next to the victim’s chair, but officers were not immediately able to locate a weapon.
The father of the victim told officers that his wife had taken a pistol, which was in the daughter’s lap, when they arrived because she feared if her daughter “woke up,” she might reach for the gun. The mother had put the gun under the front seat of their vehicle.
The father turned the pistol over to officers who noted that the barrel end of the weapon was clear of blood or tissue, and no powder burns were visible on the entry wound.
Those findings would tend to rule out suicide. In addition, the entry wound was found to be on the left side of the victim’s head. Her parents reported their daughter was right-handed.
As Wheeler was being led to a patrol car, he told officers he had seen a pistol in the victim’s hand, but that was not possible because the mother had taken the weapon and put in her vehicle by that time.
According to petitions filed for an order of protection by another woman, Wheeler was alleged to have a serious drinking problem.
He had been accused of drinking and driving with his children in the vehicle while they were in his custody.
In the divorce settlement with the children’s mother, Wheeler had been given visitation rights on certain days. The woman reported on two occasions, she had to pick the children up while they were with Wheeler. She said the reason the children had to be retrieved from Wheeler on those two occasions were “alcohol related incidents.”
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