BLOOMINGTON — A homeless man arrested in connection to a Bloomington murder reportedly admitted he fired a gun at the victim.
But he said he doesn’t believe he killed the man and that a mannequin is being used for the dead body.
Scott A. Cooper, 56, was arrested by Bloomington Police officers after they were alerted at 6:20 a.m. Tuesday that an unresponsive man could have been hit by a vehicle in a parking lot on the 2000 block of South Liberty Drive. A woman reported she had arrived at work and saw the injured man lying on the ground.
When police arrived, they discovered the victim, who had not been identified, had been shot in the chest and died from his injury.
Police found a blue 2006 Chrysler Town & Country minivan parked a few feet west of the body. The van had a hole in the windshield from a bullet that investigators say had been fired from inside the vehicle, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case.
A pickup truck belonging to the victim was parked nearby.
Officers knocked on the van’s sliding side door and woke Cooper, asleep inside. He told investigators “he had a brief verbal argument with someone, pulled out his firearm and fired it” from inside his van that morning, according to the probable cause affidavit. Cooper told police the bullet he fired had not hit anyone.
In Cooper’s van, police found a locked safe that contained a .380-caliber Ruger handgun. Police found shell casings on the curb near Cooper’s van that matched the ammunition loaded in the gun.
Cooper told police he had found the gun in a trash dumpster at the Aldi store on Liberty Drive. He said he kept it to provide security for himself and others who stay in their vehicles overnight in the parking lot.
Cooper told investigators he couldn’t say anything more because it was “a national security issue.” After all, they were on federal property, which police say was not valid.
Cooper went on to say that he was trying to sleep in his van when he heard and smelled people around him engaging in a sexual act he called “shangwing,” which he described as anal sex. He said the guy in a nearby white truck owned by the victim “kept playing around.”
Investigators said Cooper wasn’t making much sense.
Cooper then said the man in the white truck was staring at him and “doing this and that” without further explanation. He then admitted he fired a shot at the man outside of the van. At first, he said he pointed the gun at the victim and shined a laser beam in his face to get him “To leave me the hell alone.”
Cooper admitted when that didn’t work, he fired one shot through the windshield as a warning. Cooper said he didn’t mean to injure the man.
He told investigators he approached the victim and told him he was sorry. He says the victim told him he was “doped up” and “he was fine.” Cooper said he periodically checked on the man, who was still on the ground, throughout the night and kept being told he was fine.
When investigators told Cooper, the man had died from his injury. Cooper became “very upset.”
“I saw the deceased,” Cooper told police. “It was a mannequin.”
Cooper was then arrested on a charge of felony murder and transported to the Monroe County Jail. His initial hearing is today at 1:00 p.m. in Monroe County Circuit Court 3.
