In the pre-dawn hours of a Wednesday in Memphis, Tennessee, Chatoya Hunter, a 39-year-old woman, arrived for her early morning shift at the Kroger supermarket on Shelby Drive. As she pulled her red Nissan Altima into the parking lot, her life was violently and abruptly cut short by her estranged husband, 36-year-old Rodriguez Hunter. He rammed his gray Chevy Tahoe into her vehicle, pinning it and trapping her inside.
Desperate to escape, Chatoya managed to crawl to the passenger side of
her car and flee. However, as she ran towards the entrance of the grocery store, Rodriguez opened fire. Witnesses reported hearing her beg for her life before she was shot in the head and collapsed on the sidewalk, where she died. The incident, which unfolded around 5:40 a.m., was the tragic culmination of a period of escalating fear and intimidation, as her family later revealed he had been terrorizing her throughout the week.
When a police officer arrived at the scene, Rodriguez Hunter pointed his gun at the officer and shouted for the officer to shoot him. Moments later, he turned the gun on himself. He was transported to the Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. The couple had been married for 15 years and were separated at the time of the murder-suicide.
Family members, including Chatoya's 21-year-old daughter, Tierra Bonner, expressed that they had feared he was capable of such violence due to his past behavior. She described how he would break things in the house if her mother didn't want to speak with him and had even poured detergent in her car's engine to disable it. While there were no official domestic violence reports filed between the couple, court records indicated a history of violence. In 2012, another woman had accused Rodriguez Hunter of aggravated assault, stating that he had choked her. In a separate incident in 2009, he had been granted an order of protection against a former girlfriend who he claimed was threatening him. In the hours leading up to the fatal encounter, Rodriguez Hunter had posted a seemingly introspective message on his Facebook page, a 'prayer avalanche' for those going through tough times, a post that some now see as a cryptic cry for help.
