PLANTATION, Fla. – A South Florida man is behind bars after he killed his fianceé Sunday night inside her home, authorities said.
Plantation police said Royce Teets, 46, shot Terri Coolidge once in the chest with a short-barreled AK-47 rifle.
According to an arrest report, Teets called 911 just after 10:30 p.m. and said, "She got shot. She's going to die ... They were messing with a shotgun and it went off."
But an officer who went to the home said Teets claimed that he was cleaning the rifle when it accidentally discharged.
The officer said he saw a hole in Coolidge's chest area, and said the bullet appeared to have exited out her back.
Friends of the victim told Local 10 News that Coolidge met Teets on Facebook about a year and a half ago. They said she was aware of Teets' criminal history, which includes domestic violence and home invasion charges, but she believed that he was a changed man.
"I was in shock," Jody O'Neill Maginnis said. "I actually showed up to the house that morning. They were opening up a business together and I was going to work for them."
O'Neill Maginnis said the couple were about to open a call center for customers in need of help.
An ex-boyfriend of Coolidge's said another friend was on the phone with her about 10 p.m. and could hear Teets yelling in the background.
The friend said Coolidge was trying to get Teets to leave. Less than an hour later, she had been shot dead.
According to the report, Teets agreed to speak with detectives without a lawyer present and told them that his fiancee was an alcoholic and had gotten mad at him earlier that day for texting and speaking with other women.
Police said Teets claimed that he was a faithful boyfriend, but that Coolidge's last boyfriend had cheated on her.
He said he left to go drinking with friends, but changed his story several times about where he was and who he was with, detectives said.
Police said Teets returned home later that night and said that Coolidge had his Blackberry in her hands and accused him of having sex with someone named Carly.
Police said Teets claimed that Coolidge threw items around the home, broke a mirror in their bedroom and told him, "I'm going to kill you."
According to the report, Teets went to the bedroom closet where he keeps two AK-47s and grabbed one of them before Coolidge could take it.
Teets said he removed the magazine from the gun and believed that the gun was empty.
He said the argument moved from the bedroom to the living room, where Coolige was shot, police said.
"In his original version, Coolidge grabbed the gun by the barrel and pulled it to her chest, causing the rifle to discharge at point blank range," the report said. "In his second version, Teets stated she was bumping the underside of the gun, lifting it up and it went off, striking her in the chest. (In) his third version, she was hitting him trying to grab the gun and he was waving it back and forth, pointing the barrel end at her chest, waving it back and forth, and with his finger on the trigger, it went off."
Detectives said Teets said he accepted full responsibility for his fiancee's death and that if he went to jail "then that is what happens."
Detectives said an assessment of the crime scene and evidence were inconsistent with Teets' statements. They said a live round was in the chamber of the rifle, and if he had in fact removed the magazine, there would be no way that a second round could have entered the chamber.
Coolidge was described by those who loved her as a hardworking single mother of two young children. They said she had a passion for helping women in distress and was always smiling.
"She was a very loving mother. She talked about her kids all the time," Jody O'Neill Maginnis said. "They were the oxygen to her life."
Her children were not at home when she was shot.
Teets appeared Tuesday in court, where a Broward County judge ordered that he remain in jail without bond.
He faces a premeditated murder charge.