US man charged with killing wife with eye drops is now accused of poisoning child

Joshua Lee Hunsucker. Photo / Gaston County Sheriff's Office

A North Carolina man charged with using eye drops to fatally poison his wife in 2018 has been accused of poisoning their 10-year-old daughter, also with eye drops, according to court documents filed this week.

Prosecutors allege Joshua Lee Hunsucker poisoned his daughter, who survived, last year while free on bond. They say Hunsucker was carrying out a larger scheme to intimidate his deceased wife’s parents, who are witnesses in the murder case, including by staging his own kidnapping and accusing his father-in-law of abducting him.

Those harassment tactics were detailed in an indictment this week that charged Hunsucker, 39, of Mount Holly, N.C., with witness intimidation and obstruction of justice, adding to charges of first-degree murder and insurance fraud in his wife’s September 2018 death. Prosecutors who successfully sought this week to revoke his bond detailed the new accusations in their court filing.

The grand jury indictment came after a judge found in July that Hunsucker had abused his daughter and neglected both his children, now 11 and 9. The motion to revoke bond was filed on Tuesday by Gaston County District Attorney Travis Page and special prosecutor R. Jordan Green.

County records showed Hunsucker was booked into Gaston County Jail on Tuesday. A gag order prevents attorneys from publicly discussing the case; his attorney, David Teddy, declined to comment when reached by the Washington Post.

Hunsucker is charged with killing Stacy Robinson Hunsucker to collect life insurance. He filed for her US$250,000 life insurance policy two days after her death, leading her mother to file an allegation of insurance fraud against him.

Hunsucker had Stacy Hunsucker’s body cremated, but a sample of Stacy Hunsucker’s blood was preserved because she was an organ donor. Tests of it revealed tetrahydrozoline, a decongestant used in eye drops for treating redness. Ingesting it can affect the heart or cause a coma, along with other symptoms such as nausea and drowsiness, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Before his wife’s death, Hunsucker allegedly had told two former co-workers that if he killed someone, he would do it with Visine.

Hunsucker was arrested in December 2019 and was released on a bond of US$1.5 million. Leading up to the alleged February 2023 poisoning of his daughter, he had “engaged in a pattern of harassment” against his former wife’s parents, John and Susie Robinson, prosecutors said.

He allegedly routinely photographed and videotaped the Robinsons at his daughter’s sports practices; drove by their house and sent mail demanding they “drop” the murder case; and followed them, made “vulgar gestures” at them in public and suggested he knew when they changed their routines.

On February 4, 2023, Hunsucker allegedly staged his own kidnapping, reporting that he was “pistol-whipped in the head”, zip-tied and injected with something after stopping to change a flat tyre, according to the filing. He accused John Robinson of the attack.

A police investigation found no evidence of such an attack and alleged that Hunsucker created the scenario to “shift responsibility … to the Robinsons for his wife’s death”. The grand jurors charged Hunsucker with attempting to intimidate Robinson with the accusations.

A few weeks later, Hunsucker’s daughter was hospitalised after drinking a beverage in which Hunsucker had allegedly put eye drops, according to prosecutors. The child had a low heart rate, low blood pressure and extreme exhaustion and sleepiness, prosecutors said.

An antidepressant not approved for children was also found in the girl’s system, according to prosecutors. The same drug was found in Hunsucker’s bag when police responded to the false kidnapping report a few weeks earlier, they said.

Hunsucker told medical workers that it appeared his daughter had been given Visine, even though her symptoms shouldn’t have necessarily led him to that conclusion, prosecutors said.

Separately, Hunsucker is charged in a neighbouring county with setting fire to a medical helicopter while working as a paramedic.