Jury finds Ousley guilty of reckless homicide and attempted murder

EVANSVILLE — After nearly eight hours of deliberation, jurors reached a mixed verdict in 19-year-old Austin Ousley’s week-long murder trial, finding him guilty of reckless homicide and attempted murder for a 2023 double shooting.

Ousley stood accused of unlawfully entering a farmhouse that he did not own in rural Vanderburgh County before opening fire on two brothers, Shawn and Chad Wildt, who had come to investigate a spate of break-ins at their family’s property.

The 19-year-old admitted he shot both men after entering the Wildt’s farmhouse without their permission, but he pleaded not guilty to charges of felony murder, attempted murder, burglary and criminal trespassing.

Shawn Wildt, 42, was pronounced dead when law enforcement reached the farmhouse not long after the shooting on Feb. 27, 2023. Chad Wildt, 36, suffered a gunshot wound to his face and survived after undergoing a mass blood transfusion and multiple surgeries.

During the trial, Ousley testified that he opened fire in self defense — a claim that Chad Wildt directly refuted from the witness stand on Tuesday.

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Jurors ultimately determined the state had not proven beyond all reasonable doubt that Ousley committed felony murder and instead found him guilty of reckless homicide. They also found Ousley not guilty of having committed burglary or criminal trespassing. However, the 12-person jury did conclude Ousley knowingly and intentionally attempted to kill Chad Wildt.

They formally reached that verdict just before 8:30 p.m. Friday. Heath Tuley, a part-time deputy prosecutor at the Vanderburgh County Prosecutor’s Office, led the state’s case. Ousley was represented by attorneys Dawnya Taylor and Chris Lenn.

The mixed outcome means jurors did not believe the state had proven that Ousley broke into the small farmhouse where the shooting took place with a premeditated intent to kill, while also making it clear that they did not believe Ousley’s claims that he shot the brothers in self defense.

Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Diana Moers said she was proud of the work her office put into the case, describing it as a “team effort.”

“We take these cases very seriously and leave no stone unturned,” Moers said in a statement Friday evening. “We submitted over 300 exhibits for consideration by the jury. I am grateful the jury took the time they did to deliberate and make a careful decision. I hope that the families of all involved can now move forward with healing.”

Moers also thanked the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office and the Evansville Police Department for the agencies' investigative efforts.

Earlier Friday, Tuley presented the state’s closing argument and Taylor put forth Ousley’s final defense to jurors, all of whom appeared to listen intently as Tuley and Taylor characterized the evidence toward opposing conclusions.

“There’s actually a very limited number of facts that the state is required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” Tuley told jurors Friday morning.

And among those facts were claims that neither side disputed: Ousley admittedly entered the Wildts' farmhouse at 5100 Cypress Dale Road while armed with a .45-caliber handgun, and he admittedly used that weapon to shoot Chad Wildt in the face and Shawn Wildt in the back.

Both brothers were unarmed when they were shot, barring small, foldable pocket knives that they regularly carried as working farmers.

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Chad Wildt testified during the trial that he and his brother planned to verbally confront Ousley about a spate of trespassing incidents on the day of the shooting when they met a then-18-year-old Ousley and Ousley’s then-17-year-old friend at the farmhouse, which was abandoned but had special meaning for the Wildts.

The Wildts are a farming family, and their business in Vanderburgh and Posey counties goes back more than a century. The Cypress Dale Road farmhouse is central to their family’s history − the grandfather who gave the Wildts' farming business its start was raised there.

Shawn and Chad Wildt had been alerted to the teenagers’ presence at the property by two remote-operated trail cameras they had set up nearby, according to witness testimony and evidence presented at trial.

“The primary issue of dispute here is what happened inside the house and just prior to the shooting,” Tuley argued Friday.

During his closing argument, Tuley told jurors that the state had met its burden and proven that Ousley knowingly and intentionally trespassed and burglarized the farmhouse while he was armed with a deadly weapon, and that Ousley had used that weapon “to dispose of” Shawn and Chad Wildt after they confronted him.

“There would have been no confrontation in the house had he (Ousley) not been there to begin with,” Tuley said.

But the jury heard conflicting testimony about the nature of that confrontation this week from both Ousley and Chad Wildt.

Chad Wildt testified that he never laid a hand on Ousley or Ousley’s friend, who did not testify at the trial, invoking his Fifth Amendment rights. After Chad Wildt told the teenagers they were “a bunch of dumbasses” for trespassing and that he could bring the photographs taken by his trail cameras to the police, Ousley opened fire, Chad Wildt said.

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Ousley, who testified in his own defense Thursday afternoon, presented an entirely different narrative.

In Ousley’s telling, Chad Wildt threatened to take his life before punching him “between the eyes.” When Ousley made that claim from the witness stand on Thursday, gasps could be heard in the packed courtroom gallery.

Ousley maintained that he “fired from the hip … without aiming” while he was in fear for his life. The pistol Ousley used to fire those shots had been handed down to him by his deceased father, Ousley testified, and he had lawfully carried the weapon in its holster for self-defense purposes.

Taylor and Lenn argued that Ousley’s testimony and the facts of the case presented jurors with enough reasonable doubt to find Ousley not guilty of all the charges he faced.

Tuley told jurors Friday that they should dismiss Ousley’s claims of self defense, describing Ousley as a “proven liar” who had already confessed to the shooting — both from the witness stand and in a video-recorded confession Ousley produced on the day of the incident, before he attempted to take his own life.

Vanderburgh County Superior Court Judge Robert Pigman, who presided over the case, will sentence Ousley at a later date.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Jury deliberates in Austin Ousley murder trial after closing arguments