Woman pleads guilty after firing at couple
Bullet barely missed wife after confrontation in front of couple’s home
An Albuquerque woman who shot at a couple who confronted her at their home, has pleaded in federal court to illegally possessing a gun and assaulting a federal officer.
Miranda Gilbert, 31, could spend decades in federal prison over the August 2017 incident, and the subsequent manhunt and apprehension, which ended with a police chase and crash in Anton Chico.
Her plea deal, entered Wednesday, doesn’t set a sentence agreement but says that if Gilbert, who has 10 previous felony convictions — most of them for drug possession and burglary — is found to be an “armed career criminal, she faces an enhanced sentence of a mandatory minimum 15 years to a maximum of life imprisonment on the firearms charges.”
Gilbert and her boyfriend Shannon Ray were captured by U.S. Marshals a day after police say they were confronted while parked at a stranger’s home in the 3600 block of General Patch near Comanche and Wyoming.
The couple at the home had just pulled out and felt suspicious of a vehicle in the neighborhood so they circled around the block to find the vehicle parked in their driveway.
They attempted to park in the driveway as the wife confronted a woman who said she was looking for her aunt.
The woman, whom police identified as Gilbert, pulled out a gun and got in the vehicle with a male driver and made their escape — firing once on their way out of the driveway. Gilbert was initially charged in state court with attempted murder after that bullet struck the couple’s vehicle just inches away from the wife.
That state charge was dropped for the chance of possible federal prosecution, according to court documents. Federal prosecutors, however, charged her only with being a felon in possession of a firearm and assaulting a federal agent.
The latter charge, federal prosecutors say in court documents, was earned when Gilbert sped away in a vehicle as U.S. Marshals attempted to arrest her in Anton Chico the day after the couple was shot at. The car chase resulted in a crash and prosecutors say Gilbert, who was driving, attempted to somehow ram an agent.