Woman charged, man is dead after incident in Isabella

Shannon Collins, 49, of Isabella, is being held in the Ozark County Jail without bond in connection with a case in which she’s charged with second-degree assault and leaving the scene of an accident with physical injury involving a June 12 incident that led to the death of her boyfriend Mark Ault. 

She is scheduled for a bond reduction hearing at 9:30 a.m. June 20, before Associate Judge Raymond Gross.

According to the probable cause statement, prepared by Ozark County Sheriff Cass Martin, around 10 a.m. Wednesday, June 12, the Ozark County Sheriff’s Department dispatch office received a call from a reporting party who said an individual had been run over by a motor vehicle, at Collins’ and Ault’s shared residence six miles west of Gainesville on Highway 160 near Locust Road. 

The sheriff says when he arrived on scene, he found Ault lying on the ground with a pool of blood around his head.  

A woman on scene, referred to as witness #1 in the court documents, reportedly told the officer that she’d seen Collins in the driver’s seat of Ault’s vehicle (referenced in the sheriff’s report as a red Expedition) while he held onto the driver’s side door of the SUV. 

The witness said she heard the engine rev up and saw Ault pull open the driver’s side door.

In response, she said Collins reportedly accelerated the vehicle and then braked quickly, causing him to fly off of the Expedition and land hard on the ground near the front of the car, sustaining significant head trauma. The woman said Collins circled back to the area and then left the scene. 

Another witness, who was reportedly driving by the home at the time, said he saw the vehicle go by with the victim hanging onto the passenger’s side door while he was attempting to get into the vehicle. That witness also said they saw Collins driving the vehicle at the time and that she had left the scene. 

Ault was life-flighted to Cox Hospital in Springfield, where he later died. Ozark County Coroner Gene Britt ordered an autopsy. Results are pending and usually about take two to three months to receive, he said. 

The assault charge is a class D felony (which has a punishment range of not more than seven years in prison) and the leaving the scene of an accident charge is a class E felony (with punishment range of not more than four years in prison). The charges were filed before Ault’s death and shortly before Collins was set to be released from her 24-hour hold, which allowed officers to keep her in custody. The sheriff said that Collins’s charges will likely be amended now that officials know the incident led to the Ault’s death.