Background: A section of the 6700 block of Georgetown–Greenville Road in Greenville, Indiana (Google Maps). Inset: Easton Goode (Floyd County Jail).
A man in Indiana is accused of gunning down his father and stepfather in front of his own mother after a fight that appeared to have fizzled out at the suspect”s home.
Easton Goode, 23, faces two counts each of murder and criminal recklessness by shooting a firearm into an inhabited dwelling in the deaths of 53-year-old Bradley Butler and 55-year-old Kelly Goode. The defendant is being held in the Floyd County Jail without bond.
On Thursday, at about 4:45 a.m., a woman was at her home in Greenville, Indiana, with her husband, Butler, and her son, Easton Goode, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime.
It was her son who captured her attention when she woke up that morning.
When she went to check on him, she found him “laying on the floor in his room,” vomiting, the court document states. She yelled for her husband to help her get Easton Goode onto his bed, and left him there, and went back downstairs.
Within moments, Easton Goode “came down the stairs and began to become aggressive verbally” toward his mother and stepfather, according to the Floyd County Police Department detective writing the affidavit. A “wrestling” fight broke out between the son and Butler, but ultimately ended, and the two “hugged and apologized.”
Easton Goode went back to his room, but some time later, he walked downstairs, through the living room, past his mother and stepfather, and into a bathroom in the hallway, where he remained for several minutes. When the mother knocked on the door to check on her son, he opened it, revealing that “he was naked from the waist down” and “covered in his own feces,” the affidavit states.
As Butler walked over, the mother asked her son what had happened. Easton Goode “became enraged and another physical fight ensued” between the son and stepfather, according to the woman’s detailed account of events. Butler placed him in a “bear hug” and brought him into the master bedroom and held him until he “stopped fighting.”
The couple left Easton Goode, “hoping he would fall asleep,” and the mother contacted Easton Goode’s father, her ex-husband, Kelly Goode, and asked him to “come to their residence to assist with Easton.” She wanted her ex to “take him back to his house to sober up.”
Kelly Goode heeded his ex-wife’s request, even asking his friend and roommate to accompany him because his son was “drunk and out of control,” the affidavit states. When the two men arrived at the home, Easton Goode began “yelling at them.”
The mother and stepfather were sitting on the couch, and Easton Goode “came out of their bedroom and was standing in the entrance of the hallway holding his hand to his side,” the detective wrote. The defendant was telling everyone to “shut up” and “I don’t want to hear it,” police said.
When Kelly Goode and his roommate approached Easton Goode, the mother said she noticed her son “had a gun in his hand.” According to the affidavit, she had known there was a .40-caliber Taurus handgun in Butler’s bedroom, but said that earlier she had “ensured the gun was placed in the small gun safe.”
Easton Goode shot Kelly Goode, who “fell immediately to the floor,” with the friend, stepfather, and mother all standing nearby, the court document states. The suspect allegedly proceeded to raise the gun again, point it at Butler, and shoot his stepfather dead.
Butler fell from the couch to the floor, and the mother and father’s roommate ran out of the home, police said. The mother called 911.
At about 5:45 a.m., an hour after the ordeal began, the Floyd County Sheriff’s Office said it received a call about a shooting on the 6700 block of Georgetown–Greenville Road in Greenville, Indiana. Officers arrived about 10 minutes later with the belief that the suspect was still armed and inside the home.
“Officers gave loud verbal commands for [Easton] Goode to exit the residence with no response,” the affidavit states. “At 6:35 am, Officers observed Goode running through the house naked,” it adds, and seven minutes later, officers “breached the rear door of the house and deployed a flash-bang device” and were able to arrest the suspect.
The detective writing the court document says Easton Goode admitted to shooting his father and stepfather when officers spoke with him.
Officers found the two dead men inside “due to apparent gunshot wounds.” They secured the scene and spoke with the two witnesses, who gave their versions of events. During the mother’s interview, she said “she was nearly struck by a bullet and showed me a hole in her shirt with both an entry and exit hole,” the detective wrote.
Easton Goode was booked into the Floyd County Jail and is scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial conference on April 16. He has a jury trial scheduled for July 20.
