A Missouri father’s late-night act of kindness turned fatal when police allege a hitchhiker he offered help pulled a gun and stole his truck.
Shock rippled through St. Louis after authorities tied 36-year-old Brittany Rivoire to the killing of William Palmer, a father of three shot after agreeing to drive her toward a warming shelter early Sunday morning.
Investigators contend Palmer encountered the woman while traveling with a friend, and tension inside the vehicle escalated so sharply that the companion exited before violence erupted.
Court filings describe a chilling sequence where the driver suffered a gunshot wound to the head, leaving him dead as the suspect allegedly seized control of the vehicle and sped away.
Prosecutors have stacked charges against Rivoire that include first-degree murder, armed criminal action, unlawful firearm possession, and first-degree motor vehicle tampering. Booking records confirm she remains jailed without bond while the accusations wind through the legal system.
Police paperwork outlines a brief escape that unfolded after the shooting, noting the vehicle was driven several blocks and then deserted.
Authorities further allege she quickly secured another ride from an unsuspecting motorist before officers tracked her down and placed her under arrest.
Questions about motive remain unsettled, and official filings have yet to pinpoint what triggered the gunfire. Heartbreak, however, poured from those closest to Palmer as they tried to piece together his final moments.
“As far as we know, she asked him at a gas station to take her to a warming shelter because she was cold,” his fiancé Riyen Jones recounted while speaking publicly about the tragedy.
“For somebody to take him for granted when all he was doing was helping her and then to do it to basically take his truck is … I can’t wrap my head around it.”
Loved ones depicted Palmer as someone known for stopping when others kept driving, and they described his last outing as routine.
Family accounts indicate he spent that night gathering scrap metal when the encounter occurred, continuing a pattern of generosity that had sparked concern before.
“I used to tell him all the time not to pick up people off the side of the road anymore. He did it a lot. If he saw someone walking, he was picking them up and taking them as far as he could,” Jones added, underscoring how familiar the habit had become.
Authorities have also highlighted Rivoire’s prior legal history while detailing the charges, pointing to a 2024 conviction tied to motor vehicle tampering.
Officials have not linked that earlier case to the fatal encounter, but the background surfaced as investigators outlined the suspect’s record during booking procedures.
Law enforcement communications have stayed focused on reconstructing events surrounding the shooting and documenting steps taken before the arrest, leaving lingering questions to be resolved in court proceedings still ahead.
The violence has unfolded against a broader backdrop of cases involving ride offers gone dangerously wrong, and recent incidents from other jurisdictions illustrate how unpredictable such encounters can become.
On California’s northern coast, deputies responding to reports of a roadside fight confronted a hitchhiker accused of attacking the person who stopped to help him.
Sheriff’s office accounts describe a chaotic encounter where the individual, later identified as 36-year-old Nicholas Bakewell, allegedly “brutally assaulted” the driver and left him hospitalized before deputies located him walking along a roadway.
Officers reported that commands were ignored and tension escalated as the suspect took what they characterized as a fighting stance and rushed toward a deputy, prompting a display of a stun gun while personnel attempted to defuse the confrontation.
Pursuit carried into roadside brush, and officials detailed the deployment of pepper spray followed by a stun device when the suspect allegedly resisted and struck an officer during handcuffing attempts. Police from Willits joined deputies before the man was finally restrained and removed from the vegetation.
Monitoring soon turned urgent when the detainee became unresponsive, triggering immediate efforts by law enforcement to revive him through CPR and Narcan administration before emergency crews arrived. Fire and EMS personnel continued lifesaving attempts for roughly 25 minutes, yet he was pronounced dead at the scene.
A coroner’s finding later attributed the death to restraint-associated asphyxiation while also listing a cardiac event, drug intoxication, and pre-existing conditions as contributing factors.
Litigation followed when his relatives lodged a federal wrongful death lawsuit in February 2026 alleging excessive force and insufficient medical care by agencies involved.
Separate developments elsewhere have added further context as authorities tracked suspects linked to killings involving hitchhiking encounters.
In Tennessee last May, deputies coordinated with North Carolina investigators to capture 21-year-old Nicolai Chisala Hubbeling during what officials described as a coordinated vehicle takedown near his residence.
He faced a first-degree murder accusation connected to the disappearance and death of 81-year-old William Scott Lowry, who vanished in August 2024 after being spotted walking near his home.
The arrest followed an anonymous tip claiming the suspect spoke about violent impulses and confessed to shooting Lowry while the elderly man sought transportation along a rural roadway.
Investigators traced leads generated from that call to locate Hubbeling across state lines, drawing together agencies in a joint effort that ultimately placed him in custody to answer the allegation.
Authorities have not publicly detailed the whereabouts of Lowry’s remains beyond noting the caller alleged disposal in an unknown location.
Another long-running case reached resolution decades after tragedy struck when Salt Lake City police closed the file on the 1985 killing of 18-year-old Christine Gallegos.
The teenager’s body had been discovered after she attempted to hitchhike to work, bearing injuries investigators described as severe blunt force trauma, stabbing, and gunshots.
Advances in genetic genealogy analysis later pointed detectives toward Ricky Lee Stallworth, a U.S. Air Force airman stationed in Utah at the time, after DNA collected decades earlier was reanalyzed.
Detectives confirmed the identification through a voluntary family sample yet never confronted the man himself because he died of natural causes in July 2023 before investigators reached him.
Reflections on that outcome captured the frustration of closure arriving without accountability. “I wish we could have got to him before he died,” retired Detective Cordon Parks lamented while addressing the case’s conclusion.
