SEDALIA, Mo. — Sedalia police said a 24-year-old mom was shot twice by her estranged husband just hours after she filed for a restraining order. Minutes later, when a police officer tried to arrest the suspect, 39-year-old Harry James Young, police said he shot himself in the head.
Both Harry Young and his estranged wife Kellie Young were air-lifted to University Hospital in Columbia, Missouri with critical injuries. She was shot in the arm and torso but is expected to survive. Harry Young’s prognosis is less certain.
Police say the incident happened Tuesday night in the 1600 block of South Carr Avenue. Kellie Young was sitting in her car with 31-year-old Brandon Crawford and her two small children. Crawford said Kellie realized the same car had circled the block four times and she worried she was being stalked by her estranged husband.
“As soon as he jumped out of the car he brought the gun up and she said, ‘Oh my God he’s got a gun,'” Crawford said. “Then I see two flashes and she stopped moving.”
Crawford says he jumped out of the car with his four-year-old daughter, who had been sitting on his lap. He says Young yelled at him.
“‘You think you can be with my wife and kids?'” Crawford said Young shouted at him. “‘I’m going to kill you.’ And he kept saying, ‘I’m going to kill you’ over and over as he was coming around the car and as he shot at me.”
Crawford was able to run away without being injured. Crawford said he and Kellie had just started seeing each other again after previously dating before she married Harry James Young. Kellie has a four-year-old daughter with Brandon and a three-year-old son with Harry. Both children were in the car at the time of the shooting and Crawford said it’s a miracle neither child was hit by the bullets.
“The kids were crying, they were screaming,” Crawford said.
Crawford says Kellie thought her estranged husband had placed a tracking device on her cell phone to follow her. Sedalia police confirm they are investigating that possibility.
Crawford said Kellie Young had been wanting to leave her husband because of a history of domestic violence but that she was afraid to leave him.
“She had told me several times that he’s crazy, she knows what he’s capable of,” he said.
Pettis County prosecutors have charged Harry James Young with 1st degree assault and armed criminal action. His bond has been set at $250,000.
