Man charged with murder of Boy Scouts assistant

Shane Golitko in an undated photo.

INDIANAPOLIS (Reuters) - A man charged with fatally stabbing a 76-year-old Boy Scouts assistant leader in the neck as he guided children on a hike allegedly broke his mother's arm in a fight just minutes before the attack, police said.

Shane Golitko, 22, was being held without bond on a murder charge in the stabbing death of Arthur Anderson Sunday afternoon on the Nickel Plate Trail in Bunker Hill, Indiana about 65 miles north of Indianapolis, state police said.

Anderson, who had been involved with the Boy Scouts organization for more than 50 years, was on a five-mile hike with a Kokomo troop walking with another adult and two children on the trail when he was stabbed, police said.

Witnesses told police responding to the report of the stabbing that it appeared to have been unprovoked and that the attacker had fled in a black Jeep Cherokee.

Just before the emergency call on the stabbing, Golitko's mother, Valerie Henson, 48, had called 911 to report her son for battering her during a fight at their home in Bunker Hill, state police said in a statement.

After the fight with his mother, Golitko took a knife from their house, walked about 150 yards south to the trail and stabbed Anderson, police said. He returned to the house and stabbed two dogs, killing one, destroyed some items in the house and left in the Jeep, police said.

A state trooper spotted the vehicle 20 minutes later, but the driver fled. Police pursued the Jeep for eight minutes at up to 50 miles per hour until it was stopped by a Miami County Sheriff's Department roadblock and Golitko was arrested.

Golitko was being held at the Miami County Jail on a murder charge. He also faces one felony battery charge in the attack on his mother and a felony charge for allegedly spitting at officers while he was being booked into the jail, police said.

(Reporting by Susan Guyett; writing by David Bailey)