- April 16, 2024
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A 30-year-old Bunnell woman discharged a firearm during a dispute with her husband Jan. 30, telling deputies later that she hadn't known it was loaded, according to an arrest affidavit from the Flagler County Sheriff's Office.
Carmen Owens, a resident of Elder Street, has been charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
The 911 call came in to the dispatch center as a report of suicidal threats and a handgun having been discharged.
Deputies who arrived at the scene of the incident on High Street in Bunnell detained three people — Carmen Owens, her 32-year-old husband and her husband's 62-year-old mother — and questioned them.
The husband told deputies that he and his wife had been having marital problems and talking of separation and of his desire to see other women.
On the night of Jan. 30, he said, he'd arranged to meet another woman near the railroad tracks across from 182 High Street.
But his mother and Owens showed up, and the woman he'd arranged to meet left.
Back at his truck with his wife, he was seated in the driver's seat talking with her when he heard what sounded like a weapon being cocked. He got out of the truck and stopped at the front of the truck, then heard a gunshot.
He ran, thinking his wife had just shot at him, according to the affidavit.
Carmen Owens, speaking to deputies, at first denied that she'd had a gun, then said she'd "brought the firearm to just scare" her husband, according to her affidavit.
She said she didn't think it was loaded, and that she'd pointed it toward the train tracks — not toward her husband — and pulled the trigger.
She then took the gun apart and tossed it into the woods between the tracks and the road, she said.
Deputies used a K-9 to find the gun, a Ruger LCP .380. It was buried in the dirt and had a live round in the chamber. They didn't find the magazine.
