A Richmond County jury acquitted an Augusta woman Thursday in the 2022 shooting death of her neighbor over a parking dispute.
Sarah Raine Preddy, 28, had told authorities that she fired her gun after being threatened.
“I didn’t mean to kill that woman,” Sarah Raine Preddy reportedly said in 2022 as deputies detained her in the fatal shooting of 65-year-old Shirley Bush.
Preddy, 28, was later indicted for malice murder and related charges. But a jury heard the evidence and found her not guilty on five charges. She was represented by attorney Keith B. Johnson.
Both women lived at Singleton Apartments on Damascus Road. Preddy told officers that she had gone outside to get something from her car on March 24, 2022, when her neighbor approached her. She said Preddy and her boyfriend needed to move his truck from beside the residence since he didn’t live there. Preddy ignored the request and went inside.
The argument escalated and she retrieved her gun and waited on the porch. Preddy said the victim approached her and got close, leading her to hold the gun by her side. She said Bush threatened to “beat her a**.”
Feeling threatened, Preddy fired a round from her gun, striking Bush in the head. She said the victim’s daughter then wrestled the gun from her as her boyfriend ran away. The gun fired again during the wrestling match and she fled to the back of the residence without the gun. She then heard the gun go off several times and figured Bush’s daughter had the weapon.
Preddy told authorities that she only got the gun because she wanted it as a threat to get Bush to back away from her residence.
During a Richmond County Superior Court bond hearing in 2022, the victim’s son told the judge that he arrived at his mother’s after work that evening to find her dead on the ground in front of her apartment.
“I just want to make sure the rest of my family is safe,” M. Brandon Bush told the judge in asking for bond to be denied in 2022. His sister was a witness to their mother’s death.
In 2022, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Davis said that it was just before 6:30 p.m. that night when Preddy called 911 and said she didn’t mean to kill the victim. It started when Preddy’s boyfriend parked his truck in front of the victim’s apartment and Bush and her daughter asked him to move it, Davis said. The victim and her daughter had turned to leave when Preddy came outside with a gun and escalated the argument, Davis said.
Bush was shot once in the head. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Preddy was born in Augusta, and was raising her 2-year-old daughter and working steady when the crime occurred. Preddy has no criminal history, and she was the one who called 911.
