Inset: Sheri Mitchell-Clutts (Franklin County Sheriff's Office). Background: The house where Mitchell-Clutts allegedly shot and killed her husband in Russellville, Ala. (Google Maps).
An Alabama woman is behind bars for shooting and killing her husband while he was sitting alone and watching television, Yellowhammer State law enforcement says.
Sheri Mitchell-Clutts, 65, stands accused of murder of a family member using a gun while in the commission of domestic violence, according to the Franklin County Sheriff's Office.
The underlying incident occurred on Sunday evening at the couple's residence on Duncan Creek Road in the small town of Russellville – which is located roughly 20 miles due south of Muscle Shoals – and took the life of 69-year-old Timothy Clutts, authorities say.
On the night in question, the wife herself dialed 911 and told dispatchers she shot her husband just a few minutes before 7:30 p.m., according to a report by Huntsville-based CBS affiliate WHNT.
Arriving deputies found the victim already dead, sitting in a recliner in the living room, with a lone gunshot wound to his chest, a spokesperson for the Franklin County Sheriff's Office said.
The handgun used to kill the man was found resting on top of a cooler in the house, according to the sheriff's office. When questioned, Mitchell-Clutts readily admitted to firing the fatal shot, authorities say.
But in an otherwise – and strikingly – straightforward case, the defendant allegedly offered investigators two different versions of the violent story that ended the same way.
First, the woman claimed she felt threatened throughout the day because she perceived her husband's actions as threatening to her – while he checked on her – because she was recuperating from a recent heart surgery, according to the sheriff's office.
"Her demeanor seemed obviously upset from what little interaction I had with her at the scene, but you never know what's going through somebody's mind," Franklin County Sheriff Shannon Oliver said in comments to Huntsville-based NBC affiliate WAFF.
The defendant had undergone open-heart surgery some two weeks ago. On Sunday, she said the victim kept coming into her room and bothering her, so she got her gun in case he came back, authorities say. But, as it turned out, Timothy Clutts went to watch TV instead.
So, when the man failed to bother her again, the woman sought him out, found him in the living room chair, and fired off a single round, according to the sheriff's office.
Law enforcement remarked upon the seemingly open-and-shut nature of the case.
"There's a number of cases where someone does something like this," Oliver continued. "You're actually having to track them down and find them and build evidence based on the scene. And in this situation she was pretty open. Which, you know, leads us to a bunch of questions, you know, what might have been going on with her."
So far, however, those questions have not turned up interesting answers – at least in terms of potential discord in the couple's history.
"We're going through those at the time but as of right now we've gotten the call log and went back six years," Oliver explained. "At this point, that we can find, there's no domestic-related calls there."
Mitchell-Clutts is being detained in the Franklin County Jail with no bond, records show.