On a late autumn afternoon, a dispute over a hunting lease on a remote dirt road near Williamsburg, West Virginia, ended in the tragic deaths of a husband and wife. Jennifer Thomas, a 34-year-old Caucasian woman, and her husband, Jeremiah Thomas, were shot and killed on Friday, November 29, 2019. The couple, from Smoot, West Virginia, found themselves in a heated argument with two members of a local hunting club.
The confrontation took place around 4:30 p.m.
on property near the Greenbrier and Nicholas County line. The disagreement escalated, moving from a verbal exchange to a violent encounter outside of their vehicles. It was then that one of the hunting club members, Terri Storer, brandished a 9mm Ruger handgun and opened fire.
Storer fired multiple shots, fatally wounding both Jennifer and Jeremiah Thomas. When emergency services arrived at the scene on Coleman Road, the couple was pronounced dead. The subsequent investigation by the West Virginia State Police quickly identified Storer and another individual, Randy Barnhart, as the suspects involved in the argument.
In August of 2020, a grand jury indicted Terri Storer on two counts of murder for the deaths of Jennifer and Jeremiah Thomas. Randy Barnhart was also indicted on two counts of accessory after the fact to murder. Following a weeklong trial, in January 2024, a Greenbrier County jury found Terri Storer guilty of two counts of first-degree murder. Storer was subsequently taken to Southern Regional Jail to await sentencing.
