PORT ST. JOHN, Fla. – A 24-year-old Cocoa woman faces an attempted first-degree murder charge after Brevard County Sheriff’s Office investigators say she tracked her boyfriend’s location to a darkened field in Port St. John early Saturday and fired a shot through the passenger window of her own car, striking the woman seated inside.
Katherine Dale Kelly is charged with attempted first-degree premeditated murder with a firearm, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, shooting a deadly missile into an occupied vehicle, and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, according to Brevard County Clerk of Court records in case 05-2026-CF-055828. The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office is the charging agency.
The 911 call
According to an affidavit for arrest warrant filed by BCSO Agent Dylan Weber of the Cape Canaveral Precinct General Crimes Unit, deputies were dispatched at about 2:34 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 24, to a home on Monroe Avenue in Cocoa after a report of a shooting. They found a woman with a gunshot wound to her left shoulder. Brevard County Fire Rescue took her to Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne.
In a sworn, recorded statement at the hospital, the woman told investigators that Kelly’s boyfriend had texted her asking if she wanted to “hang out” and picked her up around 1:20 a.m. in a dark-colored Volkswagen. She said they drove to a home in Port St. John, where he backed the car into an open field next to a friend’s house.
After some time, she said, a woman walked toward the car. The boyfriend identified the woman as his girlfriend. According to the affidavit, the woman walked around the front of the car to the passenger side and fired one shot through the front passenger window.
The victim told investigators the boyfriend then drove her back to the Monroe Avenue home, where the two woke the other residents. The affidavit states the boyfriend left before emergency services were called.
Shattered window, bloodstained console
Deputies identified the boyfriend’s address as an apartment on Clearlake Road in Cocoa and linked him to a gray 2016 Volkswagen Passat from prior traffic stops. Canvassing the complex, deputies found the Passat with its front passenger window completely shattered and a bloodstain on the center console, according to the affidavit.
When deputies knocked, Kelly answered the door. While being detained, investigators wrote, she said she had shot into the vehicle and that the gun was inside the apartment.
Investigators later identified the shooting scene as a grass field near the 6500 block of Bamboo Avenue in Port St. John. Deputies documented tire impressions in the grass and recovered a single 9mm shell casing.
“Self-defense,” then “make a point”
In a recorded custodial interview after waiving her rights, Kelly told investigators her boyfriend had taken her Passat without permission. She said she paid for an Uber to the Port St. John area to find it and brought her Glock 43, which she described as having a pink slide and black lower, inside her purse.
Kelly told investigators she assumed her boyfriend was in the driver’s seat when she located the car. As she got closer, the headlights came on. She approached the passenger side, and as the car began moving forward, she pulled the gun from her purse, pointed it toward the passenger side and fired, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit states Kelly first said she fired in “self-defense,” but later said she wanted to “make a point” because she believed her boyfriend was cheating on her again. Asked whether she felt guilty for shooting the woman, investigators wrote, Kelly said she believed in “karma” because the woman should have known her boyfriend had a girlfriend.
Kelly told investigators that after the shooting, her boyfriend drove away and she stayed at the Bamboo Avenue home with his friend until he returned to pick her up and drive her back to their apartment.
Kelly consented to a search of her phone, and investigators determined she had permanently deleted her text messages with her boyfriend. She also consented to a search of the apartment, where deputies found a pink and black Glock inside her purse, as she had described.
Boyfriend’s account
The boyfriend, who has not been charged, also gave a sworn, recorded statement after waiving his rights. He told investigators Kelly allowed him to take her car around 1 a.m., a point that differs from Kelly’s account. He said he texted the other woman to meet and picked her up.
According to the affidavit, he began receiving calls and texts from Kelly, who was suspicious. She sent him a screenshot of his location plotted near the other woman’s home. He told investigators he could see Kelly’s location moving toward him from their apartment, so he drove around Port St. John to evade her, and she stopped sharing her location with him.
He said he eventually backed into the field, turned the car off, and then saw Kelly approaching. As she walked to the passenger side, he started the car and heard a gunshot shatter the window. He told investigators he drove the woman home, notified the other residents, and then returned to the scene to pick up Kelly and take her home.
Investigators noted fresh lacerations with dried blood on his right arm near the elbow, which he attributed to the shattered glass.
The text messages
The boyfriend allowed investigators to review his text conversation with Kelly. The affidavit quotes the exchange beginning at 1:37 a.m., in which Kelly repeatedly accused him of cheating “just like last time” and sent the screenshot of his location.
In one message, Kelly wrote, “Smart for leaving before I’m there to take her home,” followed by, “I waws finna shoot sum istg.” The affidavit interprets the phrase as meaning she was going to shoot someone or something.
Later in the thread, the boyfriend wrote, “Ro u shitv her,” then, “U shot her bro,” and “I’m coming to you.”
At 4:06 a.m., according to the affidavit, he texted Kelly: “I love you in here any step of the way im sorry this even happened ut i promise im here for tou.”
Investigators wrote that the messages show Kelly knew her boyfriend was seeing the woman, as he had with the same woman in the past, and that she made a conscious decision to go to his friend’s home to confront them. The affidavit also notes that her deleting the messages “may suggest that she was aware that her statements were incriminating.”
In the probable cause summary, Weber wrote that Kelly took “deliberate and purposeful steps” to track down the pair, traveled there armed, warned her boyfriend by text that she was going to shoot someone, and walked to the side of the car where she suspected another woman was seated before firing. Those actions, the affidavit states, are relevant to determining that she acted with a premeditated design to kill.
Court status
A warrant was issued and served Oct. 24. Kelly made her initial appearance Oct. 25, when she was declared indigent and the Office of the Public Defender was appointed to represent her. An order setting bond was entered, though the amount was not listed on the public docket. The case is assigned to Circuit Judge Michelle Naberhaus, and arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 24.
Under Florida’s 10-20-Life statute, discharging a firearm during an attempted murder in a way that causes great bodily harm carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison upon conviction.
Kelly is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. The allegations are contained in a sworn law enforcement affidavit and have not been tested in court.
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