By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

A misunderstanding between two men Wednesday night at a home near Joplin may have escalated into a fatal bludgeoning with a baseball bat and a murder charge.

Ralph Ivy, 50, died of injuries he suffered in a fight outside a former girlfriend’s home at 2805 N. Red Fox Road. Authorities charged Aaron Eugene Pilgrim, 37, on Thursday with second-degree murder and armed criminal action in connection with Ivy’s death.

“Aaron beat him in the head with a baseball bat,” Ivy’s former girlfriend, Crystal Lynch, 23, told the Globe.

She blamed it on an unfortunate misunderstanding between the two men shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday at her home. Ivy’s death and Pilgrim’s arrest have left both men’s families and friends confused and emotionally devastated.

“This is very shocking to me, and I’m just brokenhearted,” the accused man’s mother, Elizabeth Pilgrim, said in a telephone interview.

She said it was her understanding that her son was coming to the defense of Lynch’s younger sister, Shandra, 11, in the fight between the two men. But she acknowledged that she was at church at the time and did not witness the homicide. All her information had been received secondhand, she said.

She said she hadn’t seen or talked to her son in the wake of his arrest Wednesday night.

“I’d like to hear from him what happened,” she said.

News release

The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department was releasing few details about the death. A news release Thursday morning said deputies responded to a call at 7:15 p.m. from the home on Red Fox Road concerning an assault with weapons. The caller reported that two men were fighting, and that one of them had a bat and a knife, according to the news release.

Ivy was found at the scene and taken to St. John’s Regional Medical Center, where he later died, authorities said. Pilgrim was arrested at a nearby home and was held overnight at the Jasper County Jail in Carthage on suspicion of murder, according to the news release.

An autopsy was performed Thursday in Springfield. Sheriff’s Capt. Derek Walrod told the Globe late Thursday afternoon that preliminary results were not yet known, and that no information concerning cause of death would be released until today. He also would not discuss the weapons involved in the assault. But a probable-cause affidavit filed with the charges against Pilgrim states that a baseball bat was used to inflict serious injury to Ivy.

Witness’s account