John Jefferson
Left: Shayla Curts (Ever Loved, Inc.). Right: Emmett C. Williams (Jackson County Detention Center).
A Missouri man will spend decades behind bars for shooting and killing a pregnant mother and her unborn baby.
Emmett C. Williams, 35, was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Tuesday in the death of Shayla Curts, 22 and her unborn baby. He pleaded guilty in June to charges of murder and armed criminal action.
The killing happened around 8 p.m. on Dec. 6, 2022.
Police were dispatched to the 4900 block of Bellefontaine Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, on a reported shooting, according to the complaint.
There, officers found Curts dead on a couch with a bullet wound to the head. Officers found a 9 mm Luger spent shell casing on the floor nearby.
A witness told police Williams came to his residence to hang out upstairs in his bedroom. That witness, another witness, and Curts were also in that bedroom with Williams, the complaint said. The witness told police that Curts went downstairs to the living room, and “approximately five minutes later, Williams told [the witness] he was leaving.”
About one minute later, the witness reportedly told investigators, he heard one gunshot.
“[The witness] came downstairs saw the victim deceased and his front door standing open,” the complaint said. The witness reportedly looked outside and “saw somebody running northbound,” the complaint noted.
The witness was not able to explain the violence.
“[The witness] stated there was, never an altercation between Williams and the victim during the night,” the complaint said.
At about 4:15 the following morning, Williams called 911, saying he had shot someone and wanted to turn himself in.
At a police station, he told investigators he had known the victim for four years, and they had seen each other occasionally.
He said she was “always antagonizing,” calling him a “b—-” and using a female term for his genitalia, the complaint said.
Williams said he was not typically affected by her words but that he had recently suffered the loss of multiple family members and had not been “managing those emotions well,” court documents said.
“Williams believed that this, accompanied with his own mental health issues and illegal drug use caused him to ‘snap,”” the document said.
Williams described the shooting, saying she was sitting downstairs on the couch in the living room when he came downstairs. As he was walking past her, he pulled his firearm from the holster on his hip and shot her in the head, then walked out the front door and down the street, the complaint said he told investigators.
Williams said when he arrived to a wooded area, he fell down a ravine and lost his gun, backpack and cellphone. He later took investigators there, and police found the evidence, including the gun, after a search.
Curts left behind two daughters. She had named her unborn baby Soleil, her obituary said.
“She lit up every room she walked into with her charismatic free spirit and eclectic personality,” the obituary said. “She had a comical and lively sense of humor making fun in any situation. She made her friends and family laugh everyday. She was giving, loving and she cared for everyone she met! She would often help people she didn’t even know. Shayla will be missed tremendously by all who knew and loved her. Her friends and family will keep her memory alive through all the beautiful memories she left behind.”
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