BREVARD COUNTY — A 24-year-old Cocoa woman was arrested Saturday and charged with attempted first-degree murder after she fired a single shot through the passenger window of a vehicle occupied by her boyfriend and another woman, striking the passenger in the shoulder, according to a Brevard County Sheriff’s Office arrest affidavit.
Katherine Dale Kelly, of the 1500 block of Clearlake Road, faces charges of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, shooting a deadly missile into an occupied vehicle, and use of a firearm in the commission of a crime.
Deputies responded shortly after 2:30 a.m. Saturday to a residence on Monroe Avenue in Cocoa after a call of a shooting. They found a female victim with a gunshot wound to her left shoulder. She was taken by Brevard County Fire Rescue to Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne.
The victim told investigators that Kelly’s boyfriend had texted her earlier to hang out. He picked her up around 1:20 a.m. in a dark-colored Volkswagen and drove to a field near a friend’s house in the Port St. John area, later identified as near the 6500 block of Bamboo Avenue. The boyfriend backed the vehicle into the grass and turned it off.
The victim said a white female — later identified as Kelly — walked toward the vehicle. Kelly’s boyfriend identified her as his girlfriend. Kelly walked around the front of the car to the passenger side, where the female victim was seated, and fired through the window. The victim said she was hit once and heard only one shot. Kelly’s boyfriend then drove her back to the Monroe Avenue residence and left before emergency crews arrived.
Investigators located a 2016 gray Volkswagen Passat registered to the couple at the Clearlake Road apartment complex. The front passenger window was shattered and there was blood on the center console. A single 9mm casing was recovered from the grassy field near Bamboo Avenue, and tire impressions were visible in the area.
When deputies went to the apartment, Kelly answered the door. While being detained, she stated that she had shot into the vehicle and that the gun was inside the residence, the affidavit says. Deputies later recovered a Glock 43 with a pink slide and black lower frame from her purse, matching the description she gave.
In a recorded interview after being advised of her rights, Kelly said her boyfriend had taken her car without permission. She took an Uber to the Port St. John area while carrying the gun in her purse and located the vehicle in the field. She approached the passenger side, retrieved the firearm as the vehicle began to move, and fired one round. She first described the shot as self-defense, then said she wanted to “make a point” because she believed her boyfriend was cheating on her again. She told investigators she believed in “karma” and that the other woman should have known her boyfriend had a girlfriend.
Text messages recovered from the boyfriend’s phone showed Kelly accusing him of cheating, sending a screenshot of his location near the female victim’s residence, and writing that she was “finna shoot sum.” Kelly had deleted the messages from her own phone.
The boyfriend told investigators he had allowed Kelly to take the car, received messages as she tracked him, and tried to drive around to avoid her before parking in the field. He said he heard the shot after turning the vehicle back on and saw the window shatter. He had small lacerations on his right arm from the broken glass.
Kelly was booked into the Brevard County Jail on Saturday and is still being held without bond.