A kind-hearted father of three was allegedly gunned down by a female hitchhiker he’d picked up to take to a warming shelter, cops said.
Brittany Rivoire, 36, is accused of fatally shooting William Palmer and then stealing his truck after he stopped to offer her a ride in St. Louis, Missouri, in the early hours of Sunday.
Palmer had initially been with a friend when he picked up Rivoire — but the pal was so alarmed by the hitchhiker’s behavior he opted to get out, according to the criminal complaint.
Rivoire — who was convicted in 2024 for tampering with a motor vehicle — then allegedly shot the driver in the head before driving the vehicle several blocks and abandoning it, authorities said.
She hitched a ride with another unsuspecting driver before being arrested, cops said.
It wasn’t immediately clear what sparked the deadly shooting, but Palmer’s family said he often helped strangers.
“As far as we know, she asked him at a gas station to take her to a warming shelter because she was cold,” Palmer’s fiancé, Riyen Jones, told First Alert 4.
“For somebody to take him for granted when all he was doing was helping her and then to do it to basically take his truck is… I can’t wrap my head around it.”
The victim’s family said Palmer, who was out collecting scrap metal when he was killed, was renowned for offering rides to strangers.
“I used to tell him all the time not to pick up people off the side of the road anymore. He did it a lot. If he saw someone walking, he was picking them up and taking them as far as he could,” Jones said.
Rivoire with hit with a slew of charges, including first-degree murder, unlawful possession of a firearm, armed criminal action and first-degree tampering with a motor vehicle.
She remains in jail without bond, records show.