Shooter in Justified Homicide Gets Jail in Drug Dealing

David Paul Beets ducked charges for killing a woman who came to his Knoxville home to buy heroin, claiming he heard someone breaking in and had no knowledge of the drug deal taking place.

Now, the house sits shuttered, and Beets, 42, is headed to prison. He received a 15-year sentence Friday for dealing methamphetamine out of the same home where he fatally shot 38year-old Stacie Marie Mundy last year, prosecutors said.

Mundy’s father, David Thompson, said he is simultaneously “ecstatic” that Beets is going to prison and “disappointed” that it’s not for his daughter’s killing. “My daughter was wrong. She should have never been there. But her and these two girls that I’m having to raise now,” Thompson said, referring to Mundy’s daughters, “they didn’t deserve the treatment Stacie got after this shooting.

“She was thrown away because she was an addict.”

Justified homicide

The shooting occurred during the early morning hours of Feb. 10, 2017, after Mundy went with several others to score heroin from the home at 3305 McKamey Road in Northwest Knoxville.

Mundy gave $75 to another woman, who went inside the house to buy the drugs. When the woman didn’t return, Mundy “became irate and began banging on the doors to the house and yelling,” Knox County Deputy District Attorney General Leland Price wrote in a letter.

Beets told police he was working on the computer in his office when he heard noises outside. He said he saw someone breaking the windows in the kitchen door and warned the intruder that he had a gun.

Beets — without looking out the window — fired through the locked door until the clip was empty, according to the Knoxville Police Department report. Mundy was shot four times, including two fatal wounds to her chest and back, an autopsy found. Beets called 911 to report the shooting.

Another person who went with Mundy to the house told police she was banging on the door when someone inside yelled they had a gun and warned they were going to shoot. Investigators later found broken glass from the kitchen door on the floor inside, which Price said supported Beets’ statement.

Officers also found “baggies with powdery substances, syringes and a small metal container with white residue” in the house, but they “could not locate evidence to indicate the house was used for trafficking narcotics,” the police report reads.

“There are certainly arguments to be made that Mr. Beets is not entitled to claim self-defense given the drug activity at the house,” Price wrote in his letter. “However, the state would have to show that Mr. Beets himself was engaged in an unlawful activity or was using the home to further an unlawful activity.

“I do not believe the state could prove that in this case.”

Prosecutors considered the case closed. Beets was not charged.

‘A haven for criminal activity’

Five months later, police found Beets asleep at the wheel.

Officers who responded to the Pilot on Western Avenue searched Beets’ vehicle. They found a safe in the floorboard containing meth, marijuana, suboxone and more than $1,000 in cash, according to arrest warrants. Facebook messages on Beets’ cellphone indicated he was dealing meth.

Beets made bond after being arrested on felony drug charges.

This August, authorities shuttered the McKamey Road house, with court documents citing the shooting of Mundy as well as two overdoses and an assault that occurred at the home after her death.

“In short, the residence of David Beets ... is a very dangerous location within this community,” the documents read. “(It) operates as a haven for criminal activity and is a continued threat to this community based on the activity occurring at the residence.”

Beets ultimately was convicted of possession with intent to sell methamphetamine in a drug-free school zone, and he was sentenced Friday to serve 15 years in prison.

“I’m glad he can’t affect other people’s lives like he did my daughter’s,” Thompson said.

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