Texas woman aimed gun at boyfriend for Snapchat photo — and pulled the trigger, cops say
A Texas woman faces felony charges after posing for a Snapchat photo that ended with her boyfriend dead, according to police.
Autumn King, 20, picked up an assault rifle just after noon on Dec. 23 and pointed the weapon squarely at her 26-year-old boyfriend Eric Allen at their shared home in Austin, Texas, police said in a news release Monday. Allen was holding King’s phone, ready to capture a picture of his girlfriend posing with the rifle for Snapchat — but then King inadvertently pulled the trigger, police said.
According to police, King told authorities she was “trying to be like Bonnie and Clyde” and that she “didn’t even pull it (the trigger), I just barely touched it,” KXAN reports.
Allen was dead by the time emergency responders got to the home, William Costello, a senior Austin police officer, said in a media briefing the day of the shooting. The gunshot wound was the cause of death, and the county medical examiner’s office said the death was a homicide.
Two kids were in the apartment during the shooting, police said.
“My brother made it to 26 years old — he can’t even spend Christmas with his kids this year,” LaQuisha Allen, the victim’s sister, told KXAN through tears after his death. “A 10-year-old and a nine-month-old got to watch their daddy die today. That’s the hardest thing in the world that you can see, is your daddy laying on the floor dead.”
A fugitive task force arrested King on Monday in Pflugerville, Texas, and she was taken to the Travis County Jail, according to police. She faces second-degree felony manslaughter charges. Police said they are sending the case to the district attorney for review.
An affidavit said the couple had been together for two years before the December incident and shared a child, the Austin American-Statesman reports.
According to the affidavit, King’s accidental gunshot hit Allen’s chest; but at first, King mistakenly assumed her boyfriend was pretending to be injured, the American-Statesman reports. King then saw that Allen had blood coming from his mouth and nose, so she tried and failed to take him to her car, went outside to yell for help and called emergency responders, according to the newspaper.
Police questioned King after the incident, and learned she and her boyfriend had been fighting earlier on Dec. 23 and that Allen often had guns around the home in places where kids could get their hands on them, the newspaper reports. King told police that — even though Allen told her he kept his guns empty — she thought they might be loaded, according to KXAN.
Police discovered a video on a phone at the home that caught the couple fighting with one another just minutes before King called 911, with police writing that “based on what the video shows the argument between the two is about them both cheating on each other and justification for doing so,” according to KXAN.
King is being held on $200,000 bond, according to online Travis County Jail records.
Police said Allen was killed with a Mossberg .22 caliber rifle, which was working appropriately, according to KXAN.
King told police “her dad always told her never touch a gun,” the American Statesman reports. “I didn’t listen,” King said, according to police.