Man shoots girlfriend and her mother outside Kentucky courthouse

A Kentucky woman seeking a protective order against her boyfriend was fatally shot with her mother outside the courthouse in Elizabethtown Monday morning before her hearing.

Erica Riley, 37, and her mother, Janet Riley, 71, were identified by several news sockets like the women killed by Christopher Elder, 46, outside the Hardin County Justice Center.

A third family member was injured, Elizabethtown Police Chief Jeremy Thompson told reporters on Monday. Police did not immediately respond to JS’s request for an update on their condition on Tuesday.

After a chase and standoff with police, Elder fatally shot himself.

Court records cited by WAVE-TV in Louisville said Erica Riley and Elder would have a court hearing that morning on a request for an emergency protective order. Riley said Elder had been abusing her and her two children for a year and a half.

The document, obtained by WAVE-TV, details an incident in which Riley said Elder was drunk and yelling at her daughter and when she tried to intervene, he punched her twice in the jaw.

Thompson told reporters that two children were part of it the protective order case also happened when Riley and her mother were shot. The children were unharmed.

Elizabethtown police spokesperson Chris Denham told WDRB-TV in Louisville that Janet Riley was taken to the hospital after the shooting, where she died from her injuries.

Thompson told reporters that Elder drove away before authorities arrived.

Several law enforcement agencies, including Kentucky State Police, pursued Elder. The Hopkinsville police said he “actively pointed a rifle at pursuing officers multiple times.” He then drove into a church parking lot, where a standoff began.

During the standoff, Elder pointed his gun at himself and officers, police officers reported. After about 90 minutes of negotiations, Elder shot himself in the head, authorities said.

Elder was flown to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, where he was later pronounced dead. Denham told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear responded to the incident on X, calling the shooting a “senseless act of violence.”

Data cited by the Domestic Violence Hotline reveals that nearly 1 in 4 women in the U.S. will be victims of serious physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime and that the presence of a firearm in a domestic violence situation increases women’s risk of homicide by 500%.

Need help? In the US you can call 1-866-331-9474 or text ‘loveis’ to 22522 for the National Dating Abuse Helpline.