NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - An 88-year-old white woman in Tennessee who was arrested for allegedly shooting a man she suspected to be taking alcohol from her liquor store said she was "fed up" with people stealing from her.
The shooting happened last week after two Black men walked into May Boyce's Murfreesboro Road Liquor and Wines in Nashville, according to an affidavit obtained by the Associated Press.
Boyce grabbed her gun and put it next to the register after the men walked to the back of the store, where the alcohol was located, and then approached her counter "in a manner that she felt" they were going to steal, the affidavit said.
Boyce said one of the men, identified as Ramon Fisher, started grabbing liquor bottles. When she approached Fisher out of suspicion that he was stealing, Boyce said he "lunged" at her, making her think he was going to "push her down" before he turned around and started running to the exit, according to an affidavit.
Boyce said that's when she fired a gunshot toward the ground in Fisher's direction, shooting him and leading him to fall into a stack of bottles before the other man helped him out of the store, the affidavit said.
His blood trail shows he walked away from the store and onto the street before he was picked up by an unknown person and dropped off at another store before he was transported to the hospital, according to the affidavit.
When officers visited him in a hospital after the shooting, Fisher told them he had been intoxicated and using drugs, and was planning to steal liquor with his friends from Boyce's store, the affidavit said.
The next day, Fisher retracted his earlier comments and told police he was planning to pay for the liquor and had been walking, not running, to the exit when he was shot by Boyce in the back.
After Boyce was released on a $10,000 bond following her arrest for aggravated assault, she told the New York Post her store had been robbed several times, and she did what she "had to do" on Tuesday.
"After you've been played for a fool by people stealing from you for years, you get fed up," she told the newspaper.
Boyce added that she "aimed at the floor to scare" Fisher and had not intended to shoot him.