LEBANON, Mo. – Missouri prosecutors charged three people with murder Tuesday after a wild brawl sparked by text messages left a teen brutally beaten to death with a baseball bat and another critically injured.
Zachary Jones, 17, died Monday from multiple fractures to the skull. On Tuesday, police charged Jerry Broyles, 25, and Terry Dunkin, 32, with first-degree murder and Terry's wife, Kimberly Dunkin, 36, with second-degree murder.
The attack happened late Sunday night in Atchley Park in Lebanon, Mo., after Jones and another teen, Matthew Bankston, sent text messages to a girl identified as Broyles' girlfriend, FOX affiliate KSFX-TV reported.
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According to police statements, the three suspects went to the park allegedly armed with metal pipes and bats.
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When they met, Broyles and his brother started hitting the two younger men with bats and a metal rod, according to the probable cause statement from police.
Bankston is in critical but stable condition at a local hospital.
Laclede County prosecutors charged the trio on Tuesday morning. Broyles and Terry Dunkin have the same mother, police said in a probable cause statement.
Prosecutors said all three people charged were in jail. Broyles and Terry Dunkin were denied bond, and Kimberly Dunkin was being held in lieu of a $250,000 cash bond.
Lebanon, a small manufacturing town of about 13,000 people on Interstate 44 in southern Missouri, has had one previous murder this year after none in 2006.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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