The 911 emergency phone received the first alert after eight in the morning on Tuesday: a shooting had occurred in a house in Indiantown, a small town of 6,000 inhabitants on the Atlantic coast of Florida.
A woman, Maribel Rosado Morales, 32, was shot several times allegedly by her ex-boyfriend, Donald J. Williams, 27.
There were also six children in the house, between the ages of 10 and 16. Two of them were receiving classes at the time of the shooting via video conference.
The youngest, just 10 years old, had actually just joined the class through the Zoom app, when her teacher, at Warfield Elementary School, noticed something was wrong. Insults and fighting noise came through the microphone, which appeared to be a domestic altercation, according to police.
The teacher quickly turned off the sound of the girl's microphone so that the rest of the class could not hear it, but moments later she could see through her computer how the child put her hands to her ears.
Then the screen went black.
"It's a sad case, a terrible case, we are doing everything we can to clarify what happened, at least from a forensic point of view," said Martin County Sheriff William Snyder.
Williams had apparently entered the home without forcing the door, and had started an argument with Morales over a video on Facebook, according to police.
They had broken up a year earlier, and there was a history of domestic violence.
"He said she smiled at him and then he was furious," the sheriff explained.
So he pulled out a gun that he had stolen in 2015 and shot him multiple times.
The screen of the 10-year-old girl was shot, according to police.
None of the minors (the woman's three children, and two cousins who lived across the street) were injured.
It was one of them who called 911. Morales was taken to a hospital, where she died as a result of her injuries.
Williams fled the home by bike to a laundry room, from where she tried to get on a bus, but the driver became suspicious and called 911.
A special operations SWAT team detained the man and recovered the weapon, which he was hiding in a bag. Williams confessed to the crime, according to police.
“I have learned over decades of doing this that when you think you have seen it all, it is not true,” said the sheriff, “I have been very careful in cases like this that induce such an emotional response, I know the people who read this or see it are going to be horrified by what happened ”.
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