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Cops: Man, 80, killed 81-year-old in cemetery over unpaid loan

TIVERTON, R.I. -- Police say a dispute over an unpaid loan was the motive for an 80-year-old man to kill an 81-year-old man in a Rhode Island cemetery.

Tiverton Police Chief Thomas Blakey tells The Newport Daily News this week that Edward Acquisto, 80, had taken out a "significant" loan in 2011 from a church in Kingston, Massachusetts.

Police say parishioner John Cloud, 81, met him June 13 in Pocasset Hill Cemetery to discuss it, and Acquisto shot him to death among the gravestones. Acquisto later led police on a car chase before officers fatally shot him.

Blakey wouldn't say how much money Acquisto borrowed or what he did with it, but he did say Acquisto hadn't repaid any substantial amount.

Acquisto was sentenced to life in prison in 1981 after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting an ex-girlfriend, reports CBS affiliate WPRI. While serving that sentence, in 1982, he pleaded no contest to manslaughter in a man's beating death. At the time of Cloud's shooting, Acquisto was reportedly out on parole.

"Boy, this is a shock," Jean Medeiros, Acquisto's next-door neighbor, told the station. "He's very fragile, very delicate, I mean he just about can walk, let's put it that way. There was no weight to him."

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