Police have issued a plea for information about the fatal shooting of Ouyen man Richard Wills, whose body was found in a shallow grave on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Mr Wills was last seen leaving his home in Hughs Street, Ouyen, at about 8am on Sunday, April 5.<\/p>\n
Police have been told he went to work on his rural property on the Mallee Highway as normal.<\/p>\n
After he failed to return home for lunch, family members searched the property for him. He was reported missing the following day.<\/p>\n
His body was found in a shallow grave on the property at about 1:30pm on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Police said he had been fatally shot and buried.<\/p>\n
A ute and a phone belonging to Mr Wills were found at the property, and officers from the Victoria Police forensic team searched the scene.<\/p>\n
Detective Senior Sergeant Steve Trewavas from the Missing Persons Squad said Mr Wills’s death was a mystery.<\/p>\n
“Sadly, Richard has clearly met with foul play. What is still unclear is exactly who was involved and why,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We are very keen to speak to anyone who may have any knowledge of the circumstances which led to his death and who was responsible.<\/p>\n
“We’re hoping that this appeal leads to someone coming forward and doing the right thing \u2014 it can be done anonymously \u2014 so that we can hold those responsible to account.”<\/p>\n
Anyone who saw Mr Wills on April 5 or has information about his death has been urged to call CrimeStoppers on 1800 333 000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Police have issued a plea for information about the fatal shooting of Ouyen man Richard Wills, whose body…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,1300,2968,44,177376,1158,292112,4905],"class_list":["post-598993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-death","tag-murder","tag-news","tag-ouyen","tag-police","tag-richard-wills","tag-shooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}