Captive dead by officer's gunshot

HOT SPRINGS — A fugitive on a two-day rampage through central Arkansas shot and injured his pregnant girlfriend and another woman during an overnight standoff in July, but it was a lawman's bullet that killed the girlfriend, investigators determined.

A deputy's round, or a fragment of a round, meant for Todd Bostian tore through Kasey Dawn Myers' lower back, sending the 18-year-old to the ground as her convict boyfriend jumped into a lake where a sniper fired a round into his head, killing him, the Arkansas State Police found.

Authorities closed the investigation Friday, with Garland County Prosecuting Attorney Steve Oliver concluding that the two sheriff's deputies were justified in opening fire on Bostian, 32.

The eight-time convicted felon terrorized an elderly North Little Rock woman, stole cars, broke into homes and used his victims' credit cards on a shopping spree that week in July before ending up dead in Lake Hamilton.

Myers was a victim of Bostian's violence, and so was Ronda Keck, the 54-year-old woman whom Bostian shot in the leg after he showed up at her and her husband's home in a gated lakeside neighborhood outside Hot Springs on July 9, authorities said Friday.

But Myers may not have been a helpless innocent captive, authorities said.

"They think I am a hostage, but we are like Bonnie and Clyde," Myers is quoted in the state police reports as having told witnesses.

"Kasey Myers had ample opportunities to leave Bostian and get help," state police special agent Shannon Shepherd wrote in a report.

At the time, though, lawmen didn't know that.

When the Garland County sheriff's office locked down the Kecks' neighborhood and surrounded the house, they were there to save Myers after relatives reported that Bostian kidnapped her at gunpoint in Ward, Garland County Sheriff Larry Sanders said.

"We were there to save her life and to save anybody else in the neighborhood," he said. "He didn't want to negotiate."

Bostian's rampage began early July 8 when he broke into Sherwood homes, stole a pickup, wrecked it in North Little Rock and then broke into a North Hills Boulevard home, police said. There he tied up a 70-year-old woman and stole her Buick, police said.

That night, he went to a trailer park in Ward in Lonoke County, where Myers was visiting relatives, grabbed her by the hair and forced her to leave, according to police and witness accounts.

At some point he stole a green Ford Mustang, and he and Myers went shopping using stolen credit cards, records say.

What prompted the crimes and why the pair ended up at the Kecks' handsome brick home that evening remains unclear.

"I didn't know what to think," Michael Keck said Friday.

He said he had met Bostian only briefly at the racetrack. And he didn't know Bostian was on the run when he showed up at his home the night of July 9.

Bostian showed him some jewelry and coins he pulled from a duffel bag - items police said were stolen.

Michael Keck, who bought gold and silver in the 1970s, said Bostian's "hot" goods weren't of interest to him but he knew he had a gun, so he didn't make a fuss.

Late that evening, the cavalry arrived. The place was surrounded. Area residents were told to lock their doors and stay inside.

Officers called and told Michael Keck to get his wife and leave his home, but she had just gotten out of the shower, he said.

So he walked out, and his wife and the two lovers remained inside.

That's when the bloodshed began.

Bostian - armed with a stolen pistol, and with methamphetamines and a variety of pills in his system - shot Myers in the arm, causing a superficial wound, records say.

Downstairs, Ronda Keck waited in a room with her dogs.

A hostage negotiator tried to talk to Bostian. He wanted the lawmen to leave.

Wearing a bullet-resistant vest and using the women as human shields, Bostian stepped outside the home and fired a shot toward deputies, authorities said.

The next time the three emerged from the home, it was through a side door, where a deputy was waiting nearby, authorities said. Bostian shot the older woman in the leg, then pointed his pistol at the deputy, who tried to talk him into surrendering, authorities said.

Sgt. James Martin, a member of the tactical team, fired his rifle twice, hitting Bostian's arm and sending Myers to the ground, bleeding and crying.

"He didn't have any choice," Oliver, the prosecutor, said about Martin's firing on his target.

Arm bleeding, Bostian ran to the lake and jumped in. At some point he ditched his bullet-resistant vest, gun and pants.

Cpl. Neal Parliment, a sniper hiding in a neighbor's yard, got a clear shot of Bostian. Not knowing whether the fugitive was still armed or what his next move would be, Parliment fired at Bostian's head, aided by a spotlight from a police boat, authorities said.

And it was over.

At the hospital, the staff tried to save Myers' baby. They performed an emergency cesarean section and found her uterus unharmed by the shooting. But at roughly five months' gestation, the baby boy was unable to survive outside the womb.

A relative has said Myers was due Dec. 1 and the baby was not Bostian's.

For Ward detective Ken King, who had investigated Myers' kidnapping, word that she died by the hand of a lawman hit hard.

"I hate that for the officer," he said somberly. "I wasn't there. I don't know the circumstances. Was there another way? I don't know."

He wasn't convinced that Myers was an accomplice to Bostian's crimes. Even if Myers had opportunities to get away from him, King said, he still believes she was a victim of a violent man who wielded power of her.

Maybe it was ignorance or fear, he said, but she really didn't have a way to be free of him.

"She was deathly afraid of him," King said. "I'm real sad about this."