Dwayne Lamont Moten, a 20 year old man from Dallas, Texas, wanted custody of his 3 year old boy, Dwayne Junior. But rather than take his ex-wife to court and argue the merits of his case he came up with a better plan. He hired a friend to shoot him, intending to blame the crime on his wife’s boyfriend. The plan was that his friend, Jacob Wheeler, would shoot Moten but only injure him. However, the bullets that struck Moten did more damage than intended. According to a police spokesman:
“He drove a short distance before he realized he was shot a little worse than he had planned and got out of his car, and was screaming for help,”
and a witness:
“Only thing we seen was this young man stopped in the middle of the street, and he got out hollering, ‘Man, I been shot. Somebody help me,’” When he hit the ground there was no more conversation going.”
Moten died from his injuries. Wheeler is in jail charged with murder.
Unsurprisingly, both Moten and Wheeler had criminal records.
In a great piece of stating the bleeding obvious, the police spokesman had this to say, lest some other bright sparks get the same idea as Moten:
“There’s legal ways to get custody of a child and taking a bullet, and ultimately dying, is definitely not one of those ways,”
