Wichita man accused of beating neighbor to death with table leg in 2018 pleads guilty
A 63-year-old Wichita man pleaded guilty Monday to involuntary manslaughter and aggravated battery in the June 2018 beating death of a 55-year-old neighbor who allegedly called him a homosexual slur in front of a gay man.
Authorities said Calvin Thornton became upset and struck Eula Duncan “approximately six to seven times” in the head with a wooden table leg at her apartment at 1212 S. Longfellow, near Harry and Rock, during an argument that occurred sometime between June 26 and June 30, 2018. A witness told police she also saw Thornton hit Duncan in the chest, stomach and legs, vow to break her legs and stomp on her head with his foot, his arrest affidavit says.
Duncan reportedly later told the witness he attacked Duncan after she used the slur and hit him in the head with the table leg first, the affidavit says.
Officers found Duncan dead on her living room couch near the bloodied table leg on June 30, 2018, two or three days after authorities think she was killed. The coroner’s office determined she died from blunt force trauma to the head, her autopsy report says.
Thornton was arrested in south Wichita a few days later.
Prosecutors were scheduled to try Thornton on one count of second-degree intentional murder this week in Sedgwick County District Court, but he changed his not-guilty plea ahead of the jury trial, said Dan Dillon, spokesman for the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office. He will be sentenced Feb. 2 by Judge Christopher Magana.
