KENNESAW, Ga. (AP) — Investigators believe a golf pro was shot to death on the course at his country club in the Atlanta suburbs because he witnessed a “crime in progress,” police said Tuesday.
It does not appear that golf pro Eugene Siller was targeted, but rather was gunned down because of the crime he came upon Saturday afternoon, Cobb County police said in an update on the triple slaying.
When police arrived at Pinetree Country Club in Kennesaw, they found a white pickup truck the suspect had been driving stuck above a sand trap near the 10th hole, with the bodies of two other dead men in the bed.
Police said the suspect is still at large. He’s believed to have fled on foot after his truck got stuck. Local news photos of the crime scene showed the truck teetering above a sand trap. Police described him as about 6-foot-1 with long hair, last seen wearing a white or tan shirt and dark-colored work pants.
The two men whose bodies were found in the truck — Paul Pierson, 76, and Henry Valdez, 46, — appear to have “no relation to the location at all,” police said in a statement. Pierson was the truck’s registered owner.
The country club is near the campus of Kennesaw State University. The school tweeted after the shooting that there were no credible threats to the campus, which is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of downtown Atlanta.
Siller was a 1992 graduate of Colerain High School near Cincinnati, Ohio, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported. He graduated from Purdue University in Indiana in 1996, school officials told reporters.
Siller joined Pinetree as director of golf in September 2019, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. Earlier, he had worked at country clubs in the Atlanta suburbs of Johns Creek and Snellville.
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