MAURY COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — A man who was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend and her unborn baby last month faces more charges after being accused of spitting on a Spring Hill officer and trying to harm a Maury County corrections officer with scissors.
Maury County Sheriff Bucky Rowland confirmed that 29-year-old Vidol Wegner of Indiana attacked law enforcement in the jail on Wednesday, Feb. 5.
Surveillance footage shows the Indiana man being escorted to his cell in the Maury County Jail. A glitch caused the video to freeze for a few seconds, so you can’t see the actual attack. However, once it stabilizes, the footage shows multiple officers on top of the murder suspect.
Wegner allegedly attacked a Maury County corrections officers with a pair of scissors — which Rowland said all corrections officers carry in their utility belts — so authorities used a Taser to subdue him. According to the sheriff, the corrections officer ended up with a minor hand injury.
Prior to the hallway incident, Spring Hill police were at the jail, executing a search warrant on Wegner’s cell phone, when they said he spit on an officer’s arm.
Wegner was being held in the Maury County Jail for two counts of first-degree murder — one for his girlfriend, Ariel Nevills, and one for her unborn child — and one count of felony murder.
Spring Hill police said the Robertson County Sheriff’s Office requested a welfare check around on Jan. 20 because of a concerning phone call that dispatch received. When officers checked the house in the 2000 block of Gale Lane, they reportedly found 30-year-old Nevills, who was seven months pregnant at the time, had sustained “fatal wounds.”
Robertson County deputies arrested Wegner, who not only made the initial phone call, but also admitted to strangling Nevills “two different ways to kill her and their unborn child,” officials said. Wegner allegedly waited until his girlfriend was dead to leave the home.
News 2’s Andy Cordan went to the Maury County Jail just days after Nevills’ death and spoke with Wegner.
“Okay, I got to hit you with the big question, you know it’s coming: did you kill her?” Cordan asked.
“I…what did I do?” Wegner replied, but he paused for several seconds before he continued. “No, dude, I didn’t. She did it to herself. I told her this is the way. I had a beautiful future set up for us. She wanted to act crazy. She chose this. It didn’t have to be this way.”
At the time of the January interview, the Indiana man seemed to blame his girlfriend for what happened because she was pregnant.
When asked if he was mad because Nevills got pregnant, Wegner offered the following answer: “Listen, when I started that relationship, I told her, ‘If we get pregnant, are we going to do something about it?’ She said, ‘Yeah.’ She found out 10 weeks in; she said, ‘I want to keep it.’ I’m like, ‘Didn’t we have that conversation? I’m not doing this.’ She said, ‘Yeah.'”
According to law enforcement, two charges will be presented to the grand jury in connection with what happened in the jail: an assault charge for the spitting incident, as well as an aggravated assault charge for the attack with the scissors.
