Photo: U.S. Marshals Service
The ex-wife of professional wrestler Kevin Nikel and her boyfriend have been charged in relation to his death, 5News reports.
Amanda Penny, 40, and Michael Hogue, 51, were both charged with first-degree murder and face additional firearm possession charges, in connection with Nikel's death, which took place in July, according to court documents. Nikel was found on the side of an Arkansas highway with a gunshot wound to his abdomen and rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The U.S. Marshals Service arrested Hogue, who is accused of pulling the trigger, and Penny, who is considered to be an accomplice, on Monday (November 17), according to a news release from the Benton County Sheriff's Office obtained by the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Both suspects are being held in Benton County Jail with no bond set.
“We still don’t know exactly what happened when he got shot,” said Susan Kinderman, Nikel's mother, via 5News.
“The detectives have been pretty close-lipped on that, which is good, but we’d still like to know exactly what happened and who did what,” she said. “I was told by the detectives that there was some kind of altercation. Shots were fired, and Kevin was killed, and that’s all we really know.”
Nikel and Penny were high school sweethearts who had been married since August 2012 until "things got progressively worse," according to Kinderman, with their divorce being finalized three days before his death.
“She was his first friend that he met in high school,” Kinderman said of her former daughter-in-law. “They were happy for a long time, and then I guess they started to grow apart,” she said, saying that “neither one of them were happy.”
“I think they enticed Kevin to meet up with them,” she alleged.
Nikel had wrestled for various promotions, which included WWE's developmental brand NXT under the name Knuckles Madsen in 2012 and 2013.