Post by Scumhunter on Apr 12, 2015 1:59:05 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: fox16.com)
It has been nearly two years since the shocking and seemingly random murder of a young Arkansas mother at a North Little Rock, Arkansas intersection. The family is still left with more questions than answers, including, most of all, what was the motive?
It was just after 7 PM on August 14th, 2013. 31-year old Samantha Olson was driving with her 11-month old daughter, Linnea, strapped into a rear-facing car seat. Olson was heading east on JFK and McCain boulevards, a few blocks from her house on West M street that she shared with her family. Her mother, Phyllis Lyles-Vontungeln, suggests she might have been headed to get a birthday present for a children's party she attended, although at the moment it's not officially known where Olson was headed.
Approaching in the inside lane from the other direction, headed west on McCain, was what North Little Rock detectives have since identified as a maroon 2008 Ford F-150 pickup. Though some witnesses at the scene would later insist that the truck had a large orange toolbox in the bed — a kind of steel crate with forklift rungs, favored by those employed in construction trades — others insisted the toolbox was silver. Witnesses said the driver was male but disagreed on his race.
As Olson and the truck passed one another, witnesses told police, they saw a gun emerge from the pickup's window, firing somewhere between three and six shots. Police will not say where on her body Olson was hit, but it incapacitated her almost instantly. With Linnea unharmed in her child safety seat, the car coasted to a stop in front of the Starbucks at JFK and McCain. Amazingly, the bullet that killed Samantha Olson passed through the six-inch gap between the top of the driver's doorframe and the top edge of Olson's partially rolled down window, leaving the glass unshattered. Though investigators would later use a metal detector on the dirt berms surrounding the intersection, searching for the slugs or bullet fragments, a spokesman said they found nothing. Likewise no shell casings were recovered at the scene. Police won't say what caliber of gun was used, or whether they recovered bullets from Olson's body or the car.
Meanwhile, the maroon Ford pickup continued on at a steady speed through the intersection, with witnesses telling police that the driver didn't race away or even try to get off the street. From there, the truck apparently motored sedately west on the same road for almost a mile, through the spot where McCain becomes West 47th Street and into Levy, where a surveillance camera caught a glimpse as it passed, just before the driver turned left on Camp Robinson Road. The last image investigators have of the pickup was taken as it passed a surveillance camera in the 3500 block of Camp Robinson. None of the video images could provide a tag number for the truck, and none of the witnesses was able to provide a better description than that it was a Ford F-150, which is a very common truck.
According to a North Little Rock Police spokesman, Sgt. Brian Dedrick while they still receive leads, the calls have decreased significantly since the case was first fresh in people's minds. The investigation has not produced as many leads as he'd like despite a $14,000 reward.
There is no known evidence, like with most homicides where the victim knew the perpetrator, and right now everything points to Olson simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
While Dedrick is confident is confident the shots did come from the truck, it might not be out there to be a find- it could now be a different color, sold, and in a different state.
Samantha's father Stan Doucet, an overnight stocker at a local grocery store was the first to receive the call she had been shot. Doucet thougt initially Samantha was in a car accident since she had a tendency to drive hard. Her mother saw a news report about the shooting and while it crossed her mind it was near where Samantha lives, she didn't think too much of it since Samantha normally didn't go out at night.
According to her parents, Samantha was friendly with everyone, which makes her being murdered even more baffling and shocking. Her father also wonders how with all the cameras following the truck supposedly, a license plate was never retrieved off the recordings.
Unfortunately, there is not much else known- and besides her parents, Samantha's husband Eric, who was planning a second child with her-and now has to raise Linnea on his own- was also left devasated.
Anyone with information about the killing of Samantha Olson should call the North Little Rock Police Department's hotline for the case at 501-680-8439. All calls will be kept confidential. There is currently a $14,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a suspect in the case.
Thoughts? This murder is both tragic and chilling at the same time. The unpleasant scariest scenario that this could have been a thrill kil. Other scenarios that cross my mind is if perhaps the person was aiming for another car, or if they mistook Samantha's car for someone else's (in other words, if there was an intended target that drove a similar car to Samantha's), or if for some reason there was random road rage, perhaps the shooter didn't like the way Samantha's car drove near him or some other idiotic reason for shooting someone. The leads have dried up, but one thing's for sure, when it comes to ANY murder, there is more often than not, somebody who either knows exactly what happened or somebody who knows a lot more than what is known publicly that either hasn't come forward or hasn't been honest with the police when interviewed. That's why, if you know who killed Samantha Olson, a loving mother of an 11-month old daughter, you have to do the right thing and call North Little Rock Police.
www.arktimes.com/arkansas/the-brutal-randomness-of-the-murder-of-samantha-olson/Content?oid=3220799
www.thv11.com/story/news/local/north-little-rock/2014/08/14/no-new-leads-one-year-after-samantha-olsons-death/14084499/
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