CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WJZY) — A North Carolina man accused of using eye drops to poison and kill his wife in 2018 has now been arrested for setting fire to a medical helicopter mid-flight over Charlotte in 2019, according to police.
Joshua Hunsucker, 37, has been charged with felony burning personal property and was issued a $50,000 unsecured bond Monday.
According to the police report, on Nov. 26, 2019, at 12:59 a.m., a piece of medical equipment was intentionally set on fire inside an Atrium Health helicopter while in flight. The helicopter was forced to land, interfering with flight operations, authorities said.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said Hunsucker turned himself into the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office this week. He was already out of jail on bond awaiting trial on charges in his wife’s death.
Hunsucker, who collected $250,000 in insurance money upon his wife’s 2018 death, has been accused of fatally poisoning her with eye drops. Stacy Hunsucker’s death had been ruled a heart attack in 2018. She was 32 and the mother of two young children.
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Hunsucker, who used to be a paramedic with Atrium Health’s MedCenter Air, was charged with her murder nearly one year later in Dec. 2019, two months after the arson incident.
Hunsucker was accused of poisoning his wife with Visine eye drops. A blood test “detected very high levels of tetrahydrozoline, which is one of the active ingredients in certain eye drops,” prosecutor Jordan Green had said in court.
High levels of tetrahydrozoline in the body can cause the heart to stop.
Green told the judge at the time, “We believe, through the interrogation of the defendant that occurred yesterday, that he was the one that poisoned Hunsucker with Visine or a similar product.”
Prosecutors believe the life insurance money was the motive for the crime.
In 2019, Hunsucker’s Facebook page showed that on the first anniversary of his wife’s death, he posted a photo of the two of them together.
“One year ago our lives changed forever,” he wrote. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her, her encouragement, her smile, how awesome of a mother she was.”
Hunsucker’s murder trial is being adjourned due to COVID-related backlog at the courthouse but nonetheless these cases will stay separate since there is no apparent connection.
The investigation into these cases remain active and ongoing.