Pierson woman charged with gunshot murder of live-in boyfriend

Courtesy photo / Bloodshed in a Pierson home was not a suicide as first believed, but murder with a live-in girlfriend charged with shooting her boyfriend to death.

PIERSON -- Audra Anderson She initially claimed she had just woken up and wasn't sure what had happened, insisting that her boyfriend, 38-year-old Robert Wood, must have accidentally shot himself. But with Wood succumbing to his injury, Volusia County Sheriff's investigators further questioned her about the details of the shooting that occurred shortly before 9 a.m. Saturday morning at the couple's home on Buckles Road.

"Anderson told investigators several different stories, eventually admitting that she fired the fatal shot that killed Wood," agency spokesman Gary Davidson said.

Late Saturday night, investigators with the Sheriff's Office's Major Case Unit charged the 36-year-old Anderson with second-degree murder. After a search of the crime scene turned up 11 marijuana plants in various states of growth, investigators also added a charge of cultivation of marijuana against her.

The Sheriff's Office was first dispatched to the scene after receiving a frantic 911 call at 8:55 a.m. Saturday morning reporting a shooting. Rather than wait for responding emergency units, Anderson loaded up the victim into a car and started driving towards U.S. Highway 17.

At about 9:06 a.m., deputies along with EVAC ambulance paramedics located the car in DeLeon Springs. Paramedics immediately started treating Wood and then he was airlifted by a Sheriff's Office helicopter to Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where he died at 11:02 a.m.

Shortly before his death, Wood told medical personnel that he had accidentally shot himself. And Anderson told investigators a similar story.

"However, investigators suspected it wasn't true because evidence from the shooting didn't match up with the story of the gunshot being self-inflicted," Davidson said. "Anderson eventually told investigators that she and Wood had been arguing for the past few days and that she awoke Saturday morning to Wood yelling and slapping her."

Anderson said that Wood then grabbed a handgun from the nightstand and walked outside and that she followed him. While outside, Anderson said she wrestled the gun away from Wood.

"Thinking there was a blank in the chamber, she pulled the trigger and nothing happened," the Sheriff's spokesman said. "Then she pulled the trigger a second time. This time, the gun fired and the bullet struck Wood in the chest."

NSBNews.net, also known as VolusiaNews.net, provides Volusia County 24 / 7 Internet newspaper coverage, 100% free with breaking news, news of record and investigative reports from New Smyrna Beach, FL, for a 21st-century digital world.