Mom Fatally Shoots Children's Father at Daycare as They Scream in Car, Claims Self Defense: Police

Bradford County Sheriff's deputies responded to the daycare in Starke, Florida early Friday evening after reports of multiple shots fired. They reported arriving to find Christopher Jones, 37, "bleeding profusely from what appeared to be multiple gunshot wounds," according to the arrest report.

The victim was able to identify his shooter as Mindy Osteen, 34, the mother of the two children he'd arrived at the daycare to pick up, per Law&Crime. Osteen was still on the scene and reportedly came up to deputies independently, telling them, "I'm right here y'all. I done it in self defense."

Jones was transported to a local hospital where he succumbed to his wounds and died.

In their report, the responding officer detailed one witness encounter with a woman who said she'd been securing her child into a car seat when she heard "3 or 4 gunshots." The woman reportedly said she saw the suspect "standing by a car with a gun in her hand, shooting at a white male in his vehicle."

She then said she saw the man "exit the vehicle while holding his chest, with blood on his shirt, running toward the daycare." The woman followed him with the gun, per the report, after which she said she heard two more shots from inside the building.

Another witness appeared to have arrived after the shooting stopped. She told police, per the report, that she saw the suspect "pacing around" near a vehicle and when she approached the front door, she saw blood. Then, according to the witness, "the door swung open and she saw a white male laying on the floor, covered in blood, reaching out his hand and stated, 'help me please.'"

Surveillance footage captured from the daycare and detailed in the arrest report painted a more complete picture of the entire altercation, which was fully corroborated by the witness statements recorded by first responders.

According to the footage, Jones pulled up to the daycare's front door at approximately 5:47 p.m., at which point he walked into the daycare to retrieve his children. Just a few minutes later, Osteen walks up to the front door with a backpack and stands between the front steps of the daycare and Jones' vehicle.

The daycare owner comes out with the children, who hug their mother, followed close behind by Jones, who begins loading the children's belongings into the vehicle. The footage shows him putting his children into their car seats in the back seat, with Osteen following closely and watching.

He then returns to the front and gets into the driver's seat. Osteen is observed in the footage walking behind Jones' vehicle and reaching her hand inside the backpack she's now holding. From there, she walks to the passenger rear door, shutting it, before walking around to the driver's side, all the while with her hand inside the backpack.

At this point, Jones is sitting in the driver's seat with the door still open, per the report. Osteen is seen walking directly up to him and firing three times, backing up slightly as she fires. Per the video, she pauses to walk closer and then fires two additional times.

Jones begins screaming as he makes his way out of the vehicle, running behind it as Osteen moves in front of it. She chases him around another vehicle, per the arrest report, before Jones makes a run for the building. Unfortunately, the inside door is locked, "trapping [Jones] between the door ways."

It is while he is there that the surveillance footage says Osteen "appears to be trying to clear a malfunction in the firearm," per the report. Appearing satisfied, she then goes to where he is "trapped" and shoots Jones three more times. After the third shot, he stops screaming.

As the victim "can be heard moaning and calling for help" on the footage, the report says that the children "can be heard screaming from inside [his] vehicle." Osteen, meanwhile, returns to the car and again appears to be dealing with a firearm malfunction, per the report.

She is seen putting the gun in the driver's seat of Jones' car and can allegedly be heard saying, "Please let the monster die." She repeats this statement as she opens the back door where the children are located. She then walks back and forth from the vehicle to where Jones is laying, saying to him at one point, "You got to die Chris, you can't kill [redacted]."

He responded, "Help me," at which point she repeated, "Chris, you can't kill [redacted]." This time, he replied, "I'm not killing nobody." It is not clear who she might have been referring to, per the redacted report, but local NBC affiliate WJHG reports the line is, "You can't kill my kids."

As Christopher is heard calling for help, footage shows Osteen grabbing his phone, walking again between where he is and his car, and then beginning to go through his vehicle. It's at around this point that the second witness mentioned previously opens the door, retreating to officers just arriving on the scene to report where Jones was.

The report notes that in addition to the children present in the vehicle as this was happening, there were also six children and two employees inside the daycare throughout the shooting.

Police were able to determine where the gun used in the shooting had come from when they made contact with the man Osteen had been staying with "for the past month," per the report. The man told them he had three guns on the property, but when asked to check on them, he discovered one was missing, an Arex delta 9mm handgun.

He described Osteen during the time she was staying with him as "always calm" and said she'd "not been acting out of character lately."

Osteen is now being held on a first-degree murder charge. She is additionally being charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse, possession of a weapon by a felon, and grand theft of a firearm. She is being held in Bradford County Jail without bond.

The suspect reportedly has a previous domestic violence charge, according to arrest reports from 2020 seen by CBS affiliate WJXT. She was found guilty of several charges involving a former partner and their child that year, per the reports, with witnesses detailing alleged instances of both partner abuse and child abuse. She then reportedly damaged the police car while she was being arrested.

In that case, she was charged with cruelty towards a child (later changed to culpable negligence), criminal property damage, domestic battery, and other charges, according to WJXT. She was ultimately found guilty on all counts and spent three months and five days behind bars.

After Jones' death, his older sister Melanie Russo told the news station that he had reached out for help over growing concern in his relationship with Osteen. She said he feared for the safety of his children and himself.

"People wanna stand up and speak for women all the time. Men can be victims, too," she said. "Men can be victims too, and I saw it with my own two eyes. I saw him live through it."

Speaking with radio station WOKV, Russo claimed that Osteen "had a lot of mental instability" and said that she tried to go to law enforcement on her brother's behalf. "Nobody took it serious, and that’s devastating because of how it ended," she said.

She claimed on social media posts confirmed by the station that even though Osteen and Jones had been broken up for six-to-eight months before the deadly shooting, Osteen allegedly "continued to stalk, harass, and threaten him—sending disturbing messages, showing up uninvited, and even attacking him during custody exchanges."

She purportedly wrote that they reported everything and "nothing was done." To WOKV, she added, "Men can be victims of domestic violence too. You see people stand up every day for women and thank god for that and absolutely stand up for women, but why are we not standing up for men, too?"

Russo also spoke with WJXT about the couple's young children, who she said "keep looking out the window for Dad to come home."

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages; Calls are confidential and toll-free.