Woman learns fate in shooting
She is sentenced to probation
A woman who fatally shot her 18-year-old daughter after the Sherwood teenager warned her not to point a gun at her has been sentenced to four years on probation for reckless manslaughter.
Court files show that Debra Denise Pitts of Maumelle pleaded no contest to the Class C felony charge in exchange for probation on Oct. 2, a day after Pitts’ 41st birthday. She faced up to 10 years in prison.
The plea agreement, approved by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Cathi Compton, was negotiated by deputy prosecutor Beth Kanopsic and public defender Lori Listopad.
Authorities believe the shooting to be an accident. According to police reports, officers were called to the family home at 505 Lynnewood Drive on May 2, 2022, where they found Ahava Kylie Ort unconscious on the living room floor, bleeding from the right side of her head, with her mother in hysterics as she used a towel to try and staunch the bleeding, according to a police report.
Ort, who was just about to graduate from high school, died about 20 minutes later at a hospital. Her mother was arrested that same night. Asked what happened, Pitts told police, “The gun just went off. My mama said it was unloaded, it just went off.”
A next-door neighbor at the house, James Tarsey Burson, directed police to two pistols, one on each side of the couch near where Ort had been lying, and investigators later discovered a BB gun. Police noted blood on the living room sofa, rug and floor.
Debra Denice Colclough, Ort’s grandmother and Pitts’ mother, told investigators that Pitts had been planning to take Ort and her 14-yearold daughter to the shooting range, describing how they had earlier been practicing with a BB gun in the backyard.
Colclough said her granddaughters wanted to know what a real gun felt like, so she let them hold her firearm, because she thought it was empty. Her son Michael Pitts had unloaded the gun the previous weekend, Colclough said.
After the girls had handled the weapon, the pistol was passed to Pitts and it went off, Colclough told police. Pitts told police she didn’t think the gun was loaded.
Pitts’ 14-year-old daughter said she had handled the gun and that when Pitts picked the weapon up, Ort told her, “Don’t point that at me and don’t pretend to shoot it,” the report states. Her mother and grandmother assured Ort that the gun was not loaded, the girl said, telling police she didn’t pay much attention to what happened after that and had left the room when the gun fired.