On the evening of November 19, 2015, 49-year-old Kristy Lynn Mitchell of Excelsior Springs, Missouri, was staying in Ridgeland, Mississippi, with colleagues from the Excelsior Springs Job Corps Center for a business conference. While walking through a restaurant parking lot toward a steakhouse, a blue Mustang pulled up alongside the group and a man inside opened fire, striking Mitchell in the abdomen. Co-workers and restaurant staff provided first aid before she was taken to a hospital, where she underwent surgery and died several hours later.

She was able to give police a description of her attacker before she passed. The shooting was part of a rapid series of attacks in the Jackson and Ridgeland area that night; investigators linked the blue Mustang and the handgun used to the crimes and arrested 22-year-old Zehulum Lael James at his mother’s apartment.

James was tried in Madison County, where multiple forensic psychiatrists testified he was not insane, the jury convicted him of Mitchell’s murder, and he received a life sentence.