Justin Faulconer

When Wintergreen Police Chief Dennis Russell was in Richmond the night of June 16, 2023, he received a phone call from a dispatcher telling him one of his officers had been killed.

The news was so shocking, Russell asked the dispatcher to repeat what she had said. He immediately headed back to the Nelson County resort community in a 50-minute drive that he said usually takes an hour and 20 minutes to observe the aftermath of a chaotic scene that resulted in the murder of Mark Christopher “Chris” Wagner II.

The Wintergreen officer and Stuarts Draft resident was shot five times in the head and once in the abdomen during a violent struggle over his firearm in a wooded area next to a resort cabin at 80 Arrowwood Lane. Wagner, 31, was responding to a report of a knife attack

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