Wealthy Porsche Owner Escapes Jail Time For Shooting Homeless Man Who Asked Her To Move Her SUV
Nov. 7 2022, Published 12:12 p.m. ET
A woman shot at a homeless man who had asked her to move her Porsche. Now, she escaped the charges with a slap on the wrist, Radar has learned.
Katie Quackenbush was arrested in 2018 in connection to the case. Recently, a judge in Tennessee sentenced the 32-year-old to 11 months and 29 days of unsupervised probation. She was not sentenced to jail, according to WKRN.
The incident happened in the Nashville area on Music Row, but Quackenbush will complete her sentence in Texas, where she now lives, the report noted.
She faces up to a year in prison after being found guilty of reckless endangerment.
The shooting happened on Aug. 26, 2017, and injured Gerald Melton who was homeless at the time, according to reports.
Police said the Porsche owner shot the victim after an argument about exhaust fumes and loud music coming from her SUV, reports noted. Melton was trying to sleep on the sidewalk around 3 a.m.
Quackenbush asked Melton if he “wanted to die tonight,” and she shot him as he walked away from the scene.
The suspect then went to Taco Bell with a passenger and then returned home, reports noted. Melton needed at least three surgeries to treat his injuries.
The shooting wasn’t reported to police until a person found Melton with gunshots and called 911.
Quackenbush tried to claim she shot in self-defense and that she feared the homeless man. But prosecutors dispelled that notion.
“The only thing unusual in this situation was her behavior and how the defendant reacted in this particular situation to the words that Mr. Melton was saying,” Davidson County Assistant District Attorney Amy Hunter said, according to The Tennessean.
“We heard from an eyewitness who was feet away from the defendant when this happened who said that she was not frightened by Mr. Melton. That she didn’t take his words seriously. That the only the person who was dangerous in this situation was the defendant.”