FOUNTAIN HILLS, Ariz — On Aug. 3, 2018, a woman called 911 and said she had shot her ex-husband in a hotel room in Fountain Hills.
“I just shot and killed my abusive ex,” the woman says. 12 News has chosen not to identify the woman because she may have been the victim of domestic and sexual violence.
In the aftermath of the shooting, the woman can be seen with her young daughter outside of the Centerstone Plaza Hotel and Suites in Fountain Hills.
She is distraught, hardly able to tell police or the 911 operator what happened. At one point she picks up the phone and tells the person on the other end, “I killed him. I had to. He was going to kill me.”
She later told a Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputy that she was speaking with her mother.
According to an interview that police conducted with the woman after the incident, she and her ex-husband shared custody of their daughter, and it was when she would make the hand-off with her former spouse that he chose to take advantage of her.
“He had been threatening my boss for some time,” she told investigators. “And he was making me have sex with him in order that he wouldn’t kill [the boss].”
On that night, the woman says her husband threw her on the bed and began choking her.
“He was on top of me, and I couldn’t breathe,” she told investigators. “He knew. He knew. He was like, ‘What are you going to do about it?’”
The woman says she got up and grabbed her gun from her purse and tried to hide it from the man, but he saw what she was doing and moved toward her, grabbing the wrist of the hand in which she held the gun.
“I didn’t want him to get it,” she said. “So I pulled the trigger, just once, and he fell.”
A deputy attempted CPR on the man, but he could not be revived.
Investigators detained the woman and read her the Miranda warning. Video shows they even fingerprinted her.
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office later called reports that an arrest had been made “inaccurate."
12 News could find no record of the woman facing charges or any hearing in court. She also did not appear on any jail or prison roster that 12 News could find.
If you or someone you know are experiencing domestic violence, there is help.
