WACO, Texas – A Central Texas schoolteacher is jailed under a murder charge in the fatal shooting of her teenage son as she was driving him to his first day at a new school.
Sarah Elizabeth Hunt, 39, remained Wednesday in McLennan County Jail in Waco under a $500,000 bond, charged with murdering her 17-year-old son Garrett Hunt. Jail records do not list an attorney for Sarah Hunt.
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McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said deputies and police in the small town of Riesel were called just before 8 a.m. Monday to a vehicle reported stalled on Farm Road 1860 about 3.5 miles (5.5 kilometers) east of Riesel. They arrived to find a minivan with its engine running and Garrett Hunt's body in the front passenger seat with multiple gunshot wounds.
They also found a .40-caliber handgun, a .40-caliber magazine and cartridges on the floorboard and on the ground outside the vehicle, McNamara said.
“She emptied the pistol into his body, 10 rounds. He never had a chance," McNamara told KWTX-TV in Waco.
Two people encountered the mother walking along the road, who told them her son needed help and was “with her mother in heaven,” according to an arrest affidavit.
“What have I done… this is not real,” she told the two people. Later, under questioning, “she would respond by sobbing, saying ‘I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to,’” the affidavit stated.
“She said she didn’t know why she did it, but I say you can’t shoot someone 10 times with a 40-caliber handgun and not know why you’re doing it. “One shot, maybe, but not 10, and the gun was empty because the slide was locked back,” McNamara said.
Hunt was in her first year as fifth-grade social studies and science teacher at Lake Air Montessori Magnet School, according to the Waco Independent School District. She had previously worked as a teacher in the Andrews school district in West Texas.
The Hunt family had just moved to the Waco area and Hunt was thought to be taking her son to Riesel High School to enroll.
“She picked him up at his father’s home and started toward (Riesel High School) because it was the first day and she was going to register him,” McNamara said. “Then she pulled over, got out of the car, stepped back and shot the boy dead."
Investigators still have not determined a motive, he said.