Seagoville Flashback: The Mushroom Fueled Shooting That Took Three Years to Catch Up With Him
Some cases close quietly. Others take years and an entirely separate, unrelated incident to finally come full circle. The story of Russell Alan Ragsdale is the second kind.
A 911 Call in the Early Morning Hours
In the early hours of February 3, 2022, Ragsdale called 911 to report that he had shot his roommate inside their Seagoville residence. He told responding officers that his roommate had attacked him and that he fired in self defense, later stating he had “shot him many times.”
Officers recovered three firearms from the home, including a 10mm Glock and an AR 15 rifle, along with nearly two grams of hallucinogenic mushrooms. The roommate, 19 year old Timothy Patrick Morris, died from his injuries. A Dallas County grand jury indicted Ragsdale for murder, alleging he intentionally and knowingly killed Morris.
That murder case was later dismissed.
An Unrelated Incident at a Dallas Church
The Seagoville shooting might have remained a closed chapter if not for what happened more than two and a half years later, on November 2, 2024, at St. Augustine Catholic Church in southeast Dallas.
According to federal court documents, Ragsdale entered the church around 5:05 PM alongside roughly 100 parishioners attending Mass. He reportedly sat in the front row, then approached the priest a few minutes later, embraced him, and handed him a note reading “may peace be with you,” before leaving the building at 5:13 PM.
What happened next alarmed witnesses. Ragsdale allegedly retrieved a rifle from his vehicle while wearing a poncho, then closed three gates to the parking lot. At 5:35 PM, he reportedly attempted to re enter the church with the rifle, but parishioners had locked the doors. A parishioner kept Ragsdale talking outside the building for several minutes until police arrived. One witness later said he believed Ragsdale intended to shoot people inside.
Ragsdale was arrested shortly after on November 22, 2024, and has remained in federal custody since.
The Old Case Resurfaces
While investigating the church incident, federal agents uncovered Ragsdale’s 2022 arrest in Seagoville and the dismissed murder case tied to it. A forensic review of his phone showed a history of drug use dating back to November 2021, including evidence that he purchased and used hallucinogenic mushrooms on February 2, 2022, the day before the deadly shooting.
Rather than refile a state murder charge, federal prosecutors brought a different case entirely. On April 29, 2025, Ragsdale pled guilty to possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a controlled substance, a federal charge tied directly to the fact that he was, in his own words, legally intoxicated from hallucinogenic mushrooms when he possessed the 10mm Glock used in the 2022 shooting.
Sentencing
On July 17, 2025, Senior U.S. District Judge Barbara M. G. Lynn sentenced the 25 year old to 66 months, five and a half years, in federal prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release.
At sentencing, Judge Lynn found that Ragsdale had not presented sufficient evidence to support his self defense claim from 2022. The court further noted that the death of his roommate was, in the judge’s words, of the defendant’s own making.
Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Nancy E. Larson announced the sentence. Ragsdale remains in custody pending transfer to the Bureau of Prisons.
A Joint Investigation
The case was investigated by the FBI’s Dallas Field Office and the Dallas Police Department, with assistance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Dallas Field Division, the Seagoville Police Department, and the Texas Department of Public Safety, the latter of which had participated in the original 2022 murder investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jongwoo Chung prosecuted the case.
It is a case that began with a dismissed murder charge in a small Seagoville home and ended, years later, with federal prison time triggered by an unsettling moment at a Dallas church.
Sources: U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Texas; FOX 4 Dallas Fort Worth; WFAA; CBS Texas; Irving Weekly; The Dallas Express
