ELBA, Minn. (FOX 9) - An elderly woman in southeastern Minnesota faces several charges after authorities say she shot her neighbor through a bathroom window, causing one of them to sustain a brain bleed.
Elba woman shoots neighbor
What we know:
Ava Leone Kock, of Elba, Minnesota, is charged with second-degree attempted murder and two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon after an incident that occurred on Aug. 12.
The Winona County Sheriff’s Office says that around 10:03 p.m. a man reported that his wife had been shot multiple times while sitting in her vehicle in the driveway.
When authorities arrived at the scene, he told them he was playing video games when he received a phone call from his wife that requested he come outside.
Charges state that when he met her at the driver-side door, she was slumped over the dash, and he noticed several bullet holes in the door and windshield. A total of seven bullet holes were concentrated in the area.
At a local hospital, deputies later learned she had bullet fragments in her eye and brain that were causing her brain to bleed.
Shooting investigation
Dig deeper:
During their investigation, deputies shined a flashlight through the holes in the driver-side door of the vehicle to show a possible bullet trajectory. According to charges, the light cast a shadow onto the wall of the apartment building to the north.
Deputies found that the wall of the apartment building adjacent to the driveway has multiple windows, and one door which leads into an apartment rented by Kock. Of those windows, one had seven holes in the screen that appeared to be roughly the same size as the bullet holes in the vehicle.
When speaking with police the following day, Kock said that she believed both her neighbors were "murdering and raping people" in the area, according to the charges.
Charges state that she says she heard them "digging graves in the basement of their apartment" and believed that kids had been buried there.
Authorities say that she said, "she had to intervene because the justice system wasn’t doing anything."
According to the charges, she told detectives that she "didn’t want to hear them anymore," so she grabbed her son’s .22 rifle because she was "a better shot with a rifle than a handgun."
She told deputies that she then took the rifle into the bathroom, which provided a clean sight of the vehicle, and stated a prayer to God to "guide my bullets like you guided David’s rock," according to charges.
She told authorities that she fired seven rounds, because seven is referenced in the Bible several times.
The Source: Information provided by charges filed in Winona County.