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In the Fugitive TV series and movie, nobody saw the “one-armed man” commit murder. That wasn’t the case on Sunday in a Mesa parking garage, where a witness told police he saw the one-armed Roderick Deshan Wagoner repeatedly stab a man who then fell three stories.
The witness, unidentified in court records, was leaving church service near 30 West Pepper at about 8:45 p.m. on Sunday when he heard a man scream for help. The booking sheet doesn’t say exactly where the witness was standing, but apparently the person got a clear view of the desperate, “bloodied” victim, later ID’d as Dustin Burton, 30, climb over a wall on the garage’s third floor.
“The victim was observed clinging to the edge by his hands,” records state. Wagoner, who is missing his right hand and part of his forearm, was then seen striking the victim “with a stabbing motion” — with his left hand, presumably.
Burton fell the three stories to the concrete below.
Moments later, police arrived at the scene and asked the victim who had stabbed him. “Deshan,” the victim gurgled. He died a few hours later at the hospital.
With the suspect’s unique description and the fact that witnesses saw him leave the garage on a BMX bike, Mesa cops quickly figured out he was the same Deshan they’d contacted earlier in the day for unrelated reasons, and they knew where to find him. Wagoner was arrested the next day at a Mesa homeless shelter.
Covered in scrapes, Wagoner denied stabbing anyone, but admitted he’d talked to the victim — who was also homeless — while getting a charity dinner at Paz de Cristo, about a mile from the crime scene. A forensics test revealed blood on his bicycle handlebars and on some of his clothing.
Wagoner remains at Maricopa County Jail.
