ST CHARLES, Mo. — A driver’s dash cam, a picture posted on social media and cooperative witnesses helped police get charges against a man with a history of violence for the murder of a 68-year-old man during a road rage incident in St. Charles County.
"He should have known we were going to find out some time. I mean, we were eventually going to find out," murder victim Ron Lawson's son, Jason Lawson, said of the charges.
St. Charles County prosecutors charged Joshua O’Keefe, 39, with second-degree murder after police say he struck Ron Lawson at least twice along Interstate 64 in O’Fallon, Missouri at about 11:30 a.m. Sunday.
Troopers found Lawson unconscious in the cab of a black Ford F-150. He was taken to a hospital where he later died from his injuries.
O’Keefe left before officers arrived, and he remains at-large.
His coworkers described him to police as “having a temper,” according to court documents.
“O'Keefe has the propensity to cause physical harm/death to anyone he comes into contact with,” troopers wrote in court documents.
Witnesses told police O’Keefe and the victim were driving westbound along the interstate and both cars stopped on the right shoulder.
The victim stopped in front of O’Keefe’s car. Both got out and walked toward each other. O’Keefe ran toward Lawson and punched him in the face. He fell onto the right lane of the interstate and O’Keefe picked him up and punched him at least one more time before putting Lawson inside Lawson’s car, where troopers found him, according to court documents.
Witnesses described O'Keefe's vehicle as a dark-colored pickup truck pulling a white flatbed style trailer, according to court documents.
One witness told police they had a dashboard camera that captured a dark-colored pickup truck pulling a white flatbed style trailer while the witness was traveling north along Route DD at Interstate 64 at 11:33 a.m. The witness told police the truck exited from westbound Interstate 64 onto Route DD, which is about two to three miles from where the crime occurred. Screenshots from the dash cam video were posted on social media, according to court documents.
On Monday, someone called police after seeing the social media post saying they lived in Lake St. Louis just southwest of Interstate 64, and O’Keefe had been at their home trying to buy a golf cart. The golf cart owner identified O'Keefe as the person who purchased the golf cart from them around 11:45 a.m. The seller said his neighbors also had security cameras, which showed a black 2019 Ram pulling a white flatbed trailer through the neighborhood at 11:40 a.m. The registration led police to O'Keefe, according to court documents.
O'Keefe's employer also called police, saying he believed the white trailer he saw on social media belonged to his company. The employer led police to a white flatbed trailer matching the one pictured in the security camera footage, according to the documents.
The employer told police he parked the trailer on Friday, and when he returned to work on Monday, the trailer was not parked the way he left it. The employer told police O'Keefe had taken the trailer before without his permission for personal use, and O’Keefe had called in sick to work – something his boss told police was unusual for O’Keefe.
Police then went to O’Keefe’s house. He wasn’t there, but his wife arrived home in the 2019 Ram pickup saying she didn’t know where her husband was and refused to answer questions without an attorney, according to the documents.
O’Keefe did not return calls from police to his cellphone.
On Tuesday, the highway patrol sent screenshots of O'Keefe's vehicle and the white trailer from the security footage to the original witnesses of the assault, who identified it as the vehicle they saw stopped behind the victim's vehicle, according to the documents.
Another citizen also called police saying O’Keefe had been to their home Sunday to test drive a couple of golf carts they were selling. The seller told police O’Keefe contacted them through social media. He arrived at their Chesterfield home at about 10:30 p.m. Before leaving, O'Keefe told the seller he was going to Wentzville to look at another golf cart for sale.
The most direct route of travel from Chesterfield to Wentzville is Interstate 64. The citizen also confirmed the vehicle and trailer in the security camera footage from Lake St. Louis was the same vehicle and trailer that arrived at their home.
O'Keefe has a history of assaults and has been in and out of prison.
In 2007, he was one of four men who kicked in a basement door to a home in St. Charles County on Labor Day and robbed 14 people of their purses and wallets who had gathered for a party. He was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2009. He had already been charged with fights and drug-related crimes.
Circuit Judge Nancy Schneider told O’Keefe, “You’re just like a one-man crime spree,” before sentencing him, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.
He is also serving a year of probation for a fourth-degree assault and interfering with arrest charge from Wentzville police. He pleaded guilty in July.
