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Left: David Brinker: (Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department). Right: Dorothy Brinker (Obituary).
An Indiana husband who shot and killed his wife during a dangerous dispute aboard a truck that the victim was driving pleaded guilty this week and received a relatively light sentence — in real terms at least.
David Brinker Jr., 39, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to one count of reckless homicide over the death of his wife, Dorothy Brinker, 36.
The incident occurred just over two years prior.
In the early morning hours on March 6, 2023, after a contemptuous night of communication over the phone, David Brinker and Dorothy Brinker were briefly in each others’ presence at their Oak Avenue residence in the Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis.
The night before, several times over, the husband angrily called his wife while she was out with friends, according to court records cited by Indianapolis-based Fox affiliate WXIN and NBC affiliate WTHR.
Dorothy Brinker was celebrating with her friends after a baby shower. David Brinker was upset because he believed she was out drinking while he was at home with their 6-month-old daughter.
Over the course of that evening, the wife told her friends she was possessed by a sense of dread due to her husband’s increasingly aggressive phone calls. But, eventually, she braved a penultimate trip.
Upon arriving, the argument over the ether morphed into an in-person confrontation and then a physical altercation. And, finally, death.
David Brinker renewed his complaints. So, Dorothy Brinker grabbed the keys to the couple’s pickup truck and fled. The man then grabbed his gun and gave chase — grabbing onto the truck’s bed. Somewhere amid the ensuing chaos, he shot into the truck’s cab and killed her.
The killer husband quickly admitted what he did — first to Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers who were the first to arrive at the scene of the slaying. David Brinker said he was toting the gun with the intent of shooting the truck’s tires out. That plan went awry.
“I think I just killed my wife,” the defendant told responding officers — who noted that he had blood on his hands and sweatshirt.
To hear the husband tell it, his wife was drunk driving and he was trying to stop her. Then, when the truck stopped, he tried to reach inside and open the door, but didn’t realize his finger was on the trigger until he heard the fatal popping sound of the weapon.
After that, the man said, he watched his wife die.
Surveillance footage showed the truck driving down the road with the defendant hanging on. Then, when the truck stops, the man is heard yelling for the driver to get out. Next, the truck jerks forward, quickly followed by a gunshot and the man saying: “Are you OK?”
Prosecutors never charged him with murder, opting instead for the level 5 felony, the second-lowest level in the Hoosier State, from the start.
Since then, the defendant has been in a combination of pretrial detention and home confinement under strict bail conditions.
During the sentencing hearing, Marion County Superior Court Judge Charles Miller explained that a plea agreement between the prosecution and the defense precluded anything more than three years behind bars — while formally giving the killer a five-year sentence.
The plea deal, however, allowed the judge to suspend two of those years. Then, when considering the time spent between the Marion County Jail and home detention, as well as good behavior credit earned, David Brinker was ordered to spend 101 days in state prison.
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The slain woman’s loved ones bemoaned the sentence.
“This city just said that if you shoot your wife in the middle of the street that you can get away with it pretty much,” Terry Conway, who is married to one of the victim’s cousins, said in comments reported by WXIN. “Your city just sent a really bad message. I don’t see how … I don’t get it. 100 days for killing your wife?”
The woman’s family initially cheered the sentencing — but that happiness quickly turned into audible tears as the reality of the plea deal and concomitant pre-trial detention credits set in, according to the TV station.
“Dorothy was very much forgotten in there,” Marie Garcia, the woman’s aunt, told WXIN. “Dorothy was made to be the bad person, a mother that went out with her friends was made to be literally made to be put as a bad person because she went out and had one night of fun with her friends. She knew something was going on that day, and there was more to this story than what was being told.”