Man charged with driving over, killing goose

Prosecutors say a Nixa man purposely drove over and killed a goose in a Springfield parking lot last month.

The man, Kristopher Sonntag, 35, told conservation agents he was just "joking around" and didn't mean to hit the goose.

Sonntag was charged Monday with two misdemeanor counts of illegally killing wildlife.

Surveillance video from Grizzly Industrial, a machinery company, shows a van driving through the parking lot on April 13. The van appears to swerve to intentionally hit the male Canada goose, then back up and run over it again.

According to a probable cause statement, Sonntag told agents the van was his girlfriend's and because he was not used to driving it, he lost control.

"Kris later stated he thought the goose would move, but it did not," the statement says.

When an agent asked why Sonntag backed up and ran over the goose again, Sonntag said he was "checking to see if it was dead and that he didn't think he hit it again."

Signs in the area of Grizzly Industrial warn people that there are nesting geese, and a female Canada goose was nearby on its nest at the time.

Debbie Eisner, the general manager of Grizzly, said she discovered the goose dead on April 13 and looked at the video on Monday to see what happened.

Conservation agents used the surveillance to track the license plate to a woman — Sonntag's girlfriend.