A 24-year-old South Dakota man doesn’t deny shooting and killing another man while in Newcastle on a Tinder date gone wrong, but it wasn’t murder, his defense attorney said. He was defending the woman he had driven nearly 90 miles to meet.
“We do intend to plead not guilty and, most likely, make a motion for … a claim of self-defense of others,” said David Holmes, a Gillette-based attorney representing Drake Alexander Ingalls of Belle Fourche.
“My client and the gal involved, that was the first time they met in person, and my client had no prior interactions or knowledge of the deceased,” Holmes said. “Defense of others is a viable defense claim in the state of Wyoming.”
Ingalls was bound over to Weston County District Court on Wednesday to face a charge of second-degree murder in the death of Jason Greene.
Holmes said that he feels Ingalls has a case for acting in the defense of the woman and not with intent to kill Greene.
“I don’t agree that this was cold-blooded murder,” he told Cowboy State Daily following Wednesday’s preliminary hearing. “This was a case where Mr. Ingalls acted out of self-defense for the other individual involved.”
He also pointed out the age of his client, that “he has zero criminal history, and this is a case where one shot was fired.”
Obviously Dead
That’s what Ingalls also told investigators with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, who took over the case at the request of the Newcastle Police Department after the Aug. 9 incident.
Ingalls said he shot the other man in defense of his Tinder date after the woman screamed for “help” several times, according to an affidavit of probable cause written by Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Zack Miller.
The shooting happened a little before 5 a.m. Aug. 9, and by the time Newcastle police responded to Greene’s home, he was lying face-down on the floor and obviously dead, wrote Miller.
An officer “entered the trailer home and located the victim … lying face-down on the floor between the hallway and living room with a large pool of blood underneath his chest,” the affidavit says. “Officers and emergency medical personnel confirmed Greene was deceased.”
The Text Message
In separate interviews with the woman and Ingalls, both told investigators how they met on Tinder and had been talking for anywhere from a couple of weeks (according to her) to a few months (according to him) before Ingalls drove to Newcastle so they could meet up, the affidavit says.
They had a room at a local hotel and had been drinking for hours by the time the woman got a text from Greene calling her a “whore,” Miller wrote.
The woman then allegedly proceeded to tell Ingalls that Greene had mistreated her, but later told investigators that Greene had “never assaulted her and the two were not in any physical altercation,” the affidavit says.
Upset after getting the text, the woman asked Ingalls to take her to Greene’s place “so she could talk to him,” Miller wrote.
The woman “told Ingalls about the text message and that Greene had abused her in the past,” the affidavit says. “(She) told Ingalls that if he heard her yell for help to come and help her.”
Greene didn’t know they were coming to his residence, the document adds. Miller’s affidavit also doesn’t elaborate on how the woman and Greene knew each other.
The woman and Greene were in a “heated verbal argument” with her “yelling loudly,” which Ingalls reportedly heard, the affidavit says. So, he left his car outside the trailer and went to the woman.
The woman also told investigators that she didn’t actually see the shooting, “and adamantly stated Greene never assaulted her and the two were not in any physical altercation,” the affidavit says.
She continued to say that Ingalls “did not need to shoot that gun at all,” Miller wrote about her statement.
Different Story
That’s not how the confrontation went down, however, Ingalls said in his own interview with investigators, the affidavit says.
“Ingalls claimed he came around a shed and observed Greene struggling with (the woman) near the doorway threshold,” Miller wrote. “Ingalls described the struggle as Greene behind (the woman) and he had his arms hooked under her armpits and another hand on the back of her head or hair, and it appeared he was trying to pull (her) into his trailer.”
Ingalls said he tried to pull the door open, then pointed a handgun at Greene and demanded he let the woman go, according to his statement detailed in the affidavit.
“At which point, Ingalls said he fired his handgun,” Miller wrote. “Ingalls could only see Greene’s chest as (the woman) was in front of him and he believed he shot him right in the middle of the chest.”
That’s when Greene stumbled back into the trailer and fell onto the living room floor.
Ingalls had the gun because he had it in his car and grabbed it when he heard the woman yell for help, the affidavit says.
Ingalls remains at the Weston County Detention Center on a $250,000 bond, and a date for an arraignment in district court to enter a plea on the charge hadn’t yet been set as of publication.
If convicted of second-degree murder, Ingalls could get anywhere from 20 years to life in prison, a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
