On the evening of December 17, 2025, a shooting in the parking lot of the Home and Appliance King store on Cedar Lane Drive in Lexington, North Carolina, left 25-year-old Kaitlin Shelby Crook dead. An off-duty Lexington police officer and mother of a four-year-old, Crook had joined the department in September 2024 and served about a year. Responding officers found three people with gunshot wounds; Crook was pronounced dead at the scene despite life-saving efforts.

Investigators with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation say the confrontation was domestic in origin and involved people who knew one another. The other two wounded were 35-year-old Zachary Rogers, an off-duty Lexington firefighter and Crook’s estranged husband, and 31-year-old Joshua Moore, Crook’s current boyfriend from Thomasville. Both men were armed and also shot; two handguns were recovered and no other suspects were believed to be involved. Rogers was taken to hospital in critical condition and Moore in stable condition; no public charges had been confirmed while ballistics and the sequence of events were being determined.

Officers, firefighters and residents held a funeral procession for Crook on December 27, 2025. If anyone has information about the events that night or knew Kaitlin, please come forward to investigators.