USA TODAY International Edition
Dad: Daughter shot man after threat
Tennessee woman charged in shooting of homeless man
NASHVILLE A Tennessee woman charged this week in the attempted killing of a homeless man had fired two warning shots, her father said, after the man threatened to harm her.
Katie Layne Quackenbush, 26, was charged with attempted murder Monday for the Aug. 26 shooting of Gerald Melton, 54, who remains hospitalized with critical injuries.
She was booked into jail Monday evening and released after posting a $25,000 bond.
Metropolitan Nashville Police Department detectives said Melton was “trying to sleep on the sidewalk” about 3 a.m. near Nashville’s Music Row when he “be- came disturbed by exhaust fumes and loud music coming from a Porsche SUV,” according to a news release.
Melton asked Quackenbush, the driver of the Porsche, to move the vehicle, police said. The two then began yelling at each other.
Police said that after Melton walked back to where he had been trying to sleep, Quackenbush got out of her vehicle with a gun and the argument continued. She fired two shots at Melton, who was wounded in the abdomen, according to police.
Melton reported that the shooter got back into the Porsche and left the scene.
Jesse Quackenbush, the suspect’s father, explains the incident differently.
An attorney in Texas, Jesse Quackenbush said his daughter and her friend were being accosted by Melton, whom he alleged approached the Porsche as the women sat inside, threatening to kill them and making explicit and sexist remarks at Quackenbush.
“She didn’t try and kill this guy,” Jesse Quackenbush said Monday night, a few hours after his daughter was arrested. “She had no intention of killing him. She didn’t know that she hit him.”
Katie Quackenbush, a mother of a 5-year-old son, drove a friend back to her car when the women reportedly saw Melton harassing other women in the street nearby, her father said.
Melton then approached Quackenbush and her friend in the vehicle.
“He comes up to their window and starts screaming in their window various threats, and something about turning their music down and that he couldn’t sleep,” Jesse Quackenbush said.
After the man walked away, Katie Quackenbush got out of her car to escort her friend to a vehicle parked close by. She grabbed her gun and put a magazine inside.
Melton began walking toward her again, the father said, at which time his daughter told Melton she had a gun.
She fired two “warning shots” and then left, because Melton continued to approach the women, according to Jesse Quackenbush.
“She did say she closed her eyes when she shot both times, but they were warnings, and she thought she pointed away from him,” Jesse Quackenbush recalled. He said there was no indication Melton was injured.
The women left and when they returned, Quackenbush’s friend’s car was surrounded by crime scene tape.
Jesse Quackenbush said his daughter obtained an attorney and eventually turned herself in for questioning by police.
He maintains she was wrongfully charged because she was defending herself from Melton.
“She has a son,” Jesse Quackenbush said. “She’s never done anything like this in her life. She had an eyewitness in the front seat.”