MISHAWAKA (WNDU) - A man arrested Thursday night after a police standoff in Mishawaka was charged with murder Saturday.
Donald Wilson, 42, is accused of killing Joann Newgent during a fight. She was pronounced dead at around 5:30 a.m. Saturday. Members of her apartment community say they lost someone they all cared about.
We used to exchange recipies back and forth, we have cookouts out here, she was like my grandmother!" Neighbor Steve Kolarich said. "Really, I'm saddened. I'm unnerved by this. It takes a lot to unnerve me, but this unnerved me."
The St. Joseph County Prosecutor's Office charged Wilson with one count of murder and one count of unlawful possession of a firearm.
This isn't Wilson's first run-in with the law. in 1995 he shot 21-year-old Christopher Lutzen, who was rushed to the hospital where he died. This put Wilson behind bars on an 8-year sentence.
According to court documents, a man called 911 when the woman he was on the phone with suddenly screamed "Oh my God!" and dropped her phone.
The woman, Joann Newgent, told her friend she confronted her neighbor in a nearby apartment about the loud music he was playing. That neighbor, later identified as Don Wilson, reportedly slammed the door on her.
Several witnesses identified Wilson as going in and out of Newgent's apartment building multiple times on August 25th.
One witness told investigators he saw Wilson carry what appeared to be a broken coffee table out of Newgent's apartment and take the table top and three broken legs to a dumpster on the apartment property.
The witness later checked near dumpster and noticed what appeared to be blood on the broken table's top. He also saw Wilson return to Newgent's apartment and carry a "plastic milk crate container" out before he disappeared into his own apartment.
While the witness couldn't identify Wilson from an old BMV photo, he identified the man in question as a heavy set while male with a large rebel flag tatoo, wearing a black shirt and blue jeans.
Officers later found a black shirt and blue jean shorts laying out in Wilson's apartment along with, what appeared to be, a bloody rag.
Mishawaka police checked Newgent's apartment after her friend called 911, the found her unconscious. She appeared o have been beaten and suffered some form of blunt force trauma to the back of her head. Officers also found a single leg of a coffee table, but no table.
Wilson was taken into custody Thursday evening after a standoff with police in Mishawaka.
