Dr Shauna Witt, a 42-year-old optometrist, was shot and killed at the Walmart Vision Center in Starkville, Mississippi on January 13, 2018. She was seeing a patient in an exam room with the patient’s young daughter when her ex-boyfriend, William Thomas Tommy Chisholm, forced his way in. A struggle followed; as Dr Witt tried to flee she was shot multiple times in the back, collapsed near the clinic’s entrance, and died shortly thereafter at a local hospital.

Witt had obtained a restraining order against Chisholm and he was facing a felony malicious mischief charge from about a month earlier for damaging her clothing and personal items. Clinic staff had been instructed to call 911 if Chisholm appeared and did so when he arrived; officers who were already en route arrested him in the Walmart parking lot after a brief struggle.

Chisholm was tried for capital murder in July 2021. The jury convicted him after a four-day trial and 26 minutes of deliberation; prosecutors did not seek the death penalty at the family’s request, and he was sentenced to life without parole.