LA PLATA, Md. (AP) — A quadruple amputee professional cornhole player acted in self-defense when he shot and killed a passenger in his Tesla during a heated argument, his attorney said Wednesday.
Dayton James Webber, 27, appeared in Charles County District Court via videoconference for the bail review Wednesday, where Judge Patrick Devine noted that he left Maryland after the March 22 shooting of 27-year-old Bradrick Michael Wells and ordered Webber to remain jailed without bail.
Webber, who was extradited from Virginia and is charged with first- and second-degree murder, hasn't entered a plea yet and is due in court for a May 6 preliminary hearing. He also faces assault and firearm charges.
Defense attorney Andrew Jezic told the court that Webber acted in self-defense and that he anticipates “a lengthy trial” to prove it.
After the hearing, Jezic told reporters that his client was “terrified.”
“The truth here is that he would have been a murder victim if he had not acted immediately in defense of his life,” Jezic said.
Family members of Webber declined to comment after the hearing.
Webber, whose arms and legs were amputated when he was 10 months old to save his life after he contracted a serious blood infection, is accused of shooting Wells, of Waldorf, twice in the head during an argument, according to police charging documents.
Karen Piper Mitchell, a deputy state's attorney, said witnesses in the car told authorities the argument was over a gun that a friend of Wells had stolen from Webber, and that Webber was upset Wells was still friends with the thief.
She said Webber and Wells had a history of arguing, including a 2024 incident in which Webber ordered Wells to leave his home. While Wells was leaving, Mitchell said Webber fired a shot from a second floor window. Jezic said Webber fired into the air.
In arguing that Webber should remain in custody, Mitchell noted that he drove to Virginia after the shooting and owns firearms.
Authorities haven’t publicly addressed whether the vehicle’s cameras captured any of what happened or whether self-driving functionality was in use in the Tesla when the shooting occurred.
According to the charging documents, Webber pulled over after the shooting in La Plata, Maryland, and asked two backseat passengers to help pull the victim out, but they refused, got out of the car and flagged down police officers.
Webber fled with the victim still in the car, the Charles County sheriff’s office said. Two hours later, a resident in Charlotte Hall, about 10 miles (16-kilometer) away, found Wells’ body in a yard along a road and notified officers.
Detectives tracked down Webber’s car in Charlottesville, Virginia, and found Webber at a hospital where he was “seeking treatment for a medical issue,” the sheriff’s office said.
Webber was featured by ESPN in 2023 in a story of inspiration, noting he rode dirt bikes, wrestled and played football before becoming a professional cornhole player. The same year, he wrote an essay for the “Today” show about how he became a professional competitor. He said he learned to grab the bean bag by the corners and throw it using his amputated arms.
A YouTube video posted two years ago shows Webber loading and firing a handgun.
This photo provided by the Charles County Sheriff's Office shows Dayton James Webber, 27, who was arrested and charged as a fugitive from justice by police in Albemarle County, Va. on Monday, March 23, 2026. (Charles County Sheriff's Office via AP)
BAGHDAD (AP) — American freelance journalist Shelly Kittleson often worked without formal assignments from editors and on a shoestring budget, taking shared taxis to lawless corners of Iraq where militia rule outweighs government control.
Kittleson, 49, has lived abroad for years, using Rome as her base for a time and building a respected journalism career across the Middle East. On Tuesday, she vanished after being forced into a car by two men at a busy Baghdad intersection, surveillance camera footage showed.
“She is a great reporter and always wants to go to areas where no one wants to go,” said Patrizio Nissirio, a former editor at Italian news agency ANSA, who has known Kittleson since 2011, when she worked as a translator for the agency.
“I said to her, ‘You don’t need to be in a war zone to do good journalism,’ and she told me, ‘I think my work is worth something when I am in those areas,’” Nissirio said.
Friends and fellow journalists describe Kittleson as a determined, gutsy reporter who spent over a decade reporting from Iraq, Syria and the wider Middle East for a variety of news outlets, including Al-Monitor, a regional news site.
Deeply curious and self-directed, she often embedded herself in local communities, sometimes staying with families rather than in hotels.
Her independence meant frequently working alone, traveling long distances and carrying heavy belongings with her at all times, while operating without the backing of a larger news organization that might have offered some protection.
The Wisconsin native is kind and spiritual, friends say, and she embraced Islam.
She left Wisconsin in 1995, when she was 19, and headed first to Italy, where she went to school and worked as a nanny, according to her mother, Barb Kittleson. She spent about 10 years in Italy before eventually settling in Iraq, she added.
Kittleson's mother said she has not seen her daughter in person since 2002, but they exchanged emails a couple of times a week, including on Monday, when her daughter sent her a couple of pictures.
“She said, ‘Here’s a current picture of me,’” her mother told The Associated Press. “That’s what she does a lot of times, quickly.”
She is a vegetarian, a lifestyle her close Iraqi friends said is often difficult to accommodate in meat-heavy Middle Eastern countries. She frequently got teased for her backbreaking bags, which she was reluctant to leave behind at the modest hotel in Baghdad where she stayed.
Three Iraqi friends and acquaintances of Kittleson spoke about her on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from armed groups if they were publicly linked to her.
In her final conversations before the abduction, she asked colleagues and friends about transport routes between cities while continuing to seek access to do stories.
Hours before she was kidnapped, Kittleson met a friend in Baghdad's Karrada neighborhood and said she had received a warning: U.S. officials had told her a militia group intended to target her. She did not believe the threat was credible.
Kittleson had been stopped before by security forces and militias at checkpoints, Iraqi colleagues said, and had always managed to secure her release. “They will not hurt me,” she told her friend that afternoon before she was taken.
Instead, she spoke of mounting financial strain, saying she had no assignments while in Baghdad. She had long struggled financially, living a frugal existence.
As a freelancer, she often relied on the support of Iraqi journalists.
On March 9, Kittleson was in Syria, seeking to enter Iraq at the border crossing in al-Qaim. Border police gave her a visa, but she was soon stopped by Iraqi intelligence officers, who turned her back, citing kidnapping threats, according to three different accounts from people she called that day.
Kittleson then went to Jordan and entered Iraq from there with little issue.
“She always complained of the treatment of freelance journalists, saying they are not paid enough. She was always trying to make ends meet and said she would sleep on any couch she could find, unlike the big foreign correspondents that sleep in fancy hotels,” Nissirio said.
“Her job has always been difficult, but she had a burning passion for it that I respect and appreciate.”
Kittleson published her most recent story Monday in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio. It focused on the effect of the Iran war on Iraq’s Kurdish region.
“Journalism is what she wanted to do so bad,” Kittleson's mother said. “I wanted her to come home and not do it, but she said, ‘I’m helping people.’”
Associated Press writers Trisha Thomas in Rome and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
The street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)
A street view shows the street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)
A street view shows the street corner in central Baghdad's Saadoun Street where U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson was kidnapped in central Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, April 1 2026. (AP Photo/ Hadi Mizban)
U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson poses for a cellphone photo in a cafe in Baghdad, Iraq, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo)
U.S. journalist Shelly Kittleson poses for a cellphone photo in a cafe in Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, March 30, 2026. (AP Photo)
