WEST PLAINS, Mo. (AP) - A southern Missouri businesswoman was charged in connection with the ambush and shooting of her daughter-in-law, who was in the midst of a bitter divorce from the businesswoman's son.
Angaline Ryan, 58, of rural West Plains, was arrested Tuesday and charged the next day with first-degree assault and armed criminal action in the April 13 shooting of Tammy Hathcock, who also was her next-door neighbor.
Hathcock was ambushed outside her West Plains home by someone with a covered face who opened fire as she sat in her driveway around 2 p.m., according to a probable cause statement filed on Wednesday with the charges.
Hathcock, director of Drury University's campuses in Thayer and West Plains, drove away and ended up in the parking lot of a nearby school honking frantically for help, the Springfield News-Leader (http://sgfnow.co/1fqy3h7) reported.
Responding officers found her bleeding heavily from multiple gunshot wounds.
The 42-year-old woman eventually recovered and told investigators her husband's family was upset about the pending divorce.
On the evening of the attack, investigators were still at Hathcock's home when Ryan and a man who lives with her drove into the driveway next door, investigators said. But when officers started talking to her about the attack on her daughter-in-law, Ryan "had no questions about a shooting that happened within eyeshot of her house" and asked investigators to leave because they "were disturbing her privacy."
Investigators obtained surveillance footage from a bank near the business Ryan owns, Regional Title Inc., in West Plains that showed Ryan was not at work for a two-hour stretch when the shooting occurred.
A search warrant executed at Regional Title uncovered a .22-caliber handgun with the serial number removed, according to the probable cause statement. Ryan said she got it from her son - Hathcock's estranged husband - who got it from a friend who bought it with the intent to kill his own wife.
Jordan Hathcock was in another state at the time of the shooting and told investigators he "never gave any firearm to his mother."
A search warrant executed at property Ryan owns in Ozark County turned up .380-caliber shell casings that matched those found at the crime scene, investigators said, even though Ryan denied owning a .380-caliber handgun. Two associates of Ryan told investigators they had seen Ryan with a .380 caliber handgun.
Ryan remains in the Howell County jail on $250,000 bond. A clerk at the courthouse said Thursday she believes Ryan has obtained an attorney from outside the area, but none had entered an appearance on her behalf.
Information from: Springfield News-Leader, http://www.news-leader.com