Roger Kelley, a 69-year-old man, was on Mowbray Mountain in the Soddy-Daisy area of Hamilton County when the quiet of a Sunday evening, August 12, 2018, broke with reports of a shooting on the 1600 block of Hotwater Road. Deputies arrived around 5 p.m. and found him dead at the scene as detectives began working the area, treating the home and its surroundings like a puzzle that had to be rebuilt from whatever fragments the gunfire left behind.
In the days that followed, the death was no longer spoken of as a tragic unknown. Investigators said the medical examiner determined Kelley died from a gunshot wound and ruled the case a homicide, turning the initial shock into a focused hunt for answers—who had come to Hotwater Road, why they had come, and what they had taken or tried to take before leaving.
The investigation led to an arrest a little more than a week later. The Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office announced that Tracy Lee Bowman, 46, had been taken into custody without incident in Bradley County on the night of Wednesday, August 22, 2018, and transported to the Hamilton County Jail. Authorities said Bowman was booked on charges of criminal homicide and especially aggravated robbery, framing the killing not only as an act of violence but as one tied to a robbery serious enough to elevate the case into one of the state’s harshest categories.
Away from the flashing lights and official statements, the public notices around Kelley’s death painted the outline of the life that had existed before Hotwater Road became a crime scene. A published obituary stated he was born September 5, 1948, and noted visitation and funeral plans in mid-August 2018, with burial to follow in Mount Pleasant Cemetery and services led by Rev. Terry Bolton—details that read like a family trying to hold onto ordinary rituals in the aftermath of something that was anything but ordinary.
