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♪♪
( narrator ) Melissa Stredney was a troubled woman.
She obviously had psychiatric issues.
I thought I could help her.
But when their engagement ended,
Melissa spiraled out of control.
She was obsessed with Jamie.
She started stalking him.
And her obsession led to one final confrontation.
I remember falling...
head-- face first onto the ground.
The shooting would leave Jamie struggling to survive.
They life-flighted Jamie out.
He was in a coma.
And Melissa's escape would end
in a police showdown.
( man ) It was going to be who got out of the car first
and could put the best shot down.
She just snapped.
Captioning made possible by OXYGEN MEDIA, L.L.C.
♪♪
Dublin, Ohio, December 14, 2010.
It was a little before 8:00 in the morning
when 30-year-old Jamie Hart
pulled into the parking lot of NCO Financial Services,
the office where he worked.
It was a cold, very cold winter day.
But the weather wasn't the only reason
Jamie hurried towards his office door that morning.
He'd been having issues with his ex-fiancée,
30-year-old Melissa Stredney.
( Jamie ) She would show up at various places where she knew I was,
have-- try to have verbal altercations with me
and I would always say...
"What are you doing here ?
This isn't the appropriate time for this."
And that Tuesday morning,
Melissa was once again waiting for Jamie in the parking lot.
As he was walking up to his place of employment,
she confronted him in the parking lot.
And this time, Jamie was in for far more
than a verbal altercation.
Another worker headed into the building
had spotted the confrontation.
She called 9-1-1,
who dispatched officers to the scene.
I put in a call of a robbery in progress
because we didn't know the circumstances.
I got the call and I'm headed towards
the scene of NCO
and as I'm getting closer,
it's obviously escalating.
But even as the witness tried to read
the Chevy's license plate, something horrible happened.
( Jamie ) My vision went black.
I remember falling...
head-- face first onto the ground.
Then, as Jamie collapsed onto the asphalt,
Melissa leapt into her car and sped away.
Although now, the emergency vehicles
rushing to the scene
had two very different priorities.
For the EMTs, it was saving Jamie.
Obviously, I was losing a lot of blood at that time
because I was struck in the head.
And for the police, it was finding Melissa.
I actually switched my directions
to try to intercept her fleeing the scene.
♪♪
Born in 1980,
Melissa Stredney grew up in Northeast Ohio
and received a chemistry degree at Ohio State.
She seemed to have her life in order,
had goals, aspirations.
After receiving her bachelor's degree,
she stayed in school,
pursuing a master's degree in pharmacy
and working as a graduate teaching assistant.
She was very smart.
She was smart enough to be a TA at Ohio State.
And in 2008, at a Columbus coffee shop,
the 28-year-old caught Jamie Hart's eye.
She had a lot of tattoos and piercings
and things like that.
She was friendly, nice, energetic,
social, happy, um...
had a zeal for life.
Also 28, with a history degree from Urbana University
and a job at NCO Financial,
Jamie started chatting with Melissa just to pass the time.
It was a long line, so we just started talking
and kind of, you know,
ended up kind of hitting it off.
At the coffee shop, they ended up sharing a table.
And before long, they were dating.
We would spend a lot of time together.
We would talk all the time.
Just silly stuff actually,
like art projects, going to the zoo.
Within a few weeks,
Jamie had introduced Melissa to his family,
who didn't hit it off with her nearly as well as Jamie had.
Jamie's family, um...
had issues with her.
She was apparently not very social,
she was very quiet around them.
She pretty much didn't speak
unless you engaged her in conversation,
which was also a little different
because Jamie is so outgoing.
The family's cool reception
did little to deter Jamie, however.
By the beginning of 2009,
he and Melissa had moved in together.
Things were going well.
She asked me to move in to her place,
which I thought was fine.
But shortly after he moved in,
Melissa came to him and made a confession.
She said she was battling with spots of depression,
taking medication.
I knew she was seeing a therapist at the time.
She had a bit of a past but was--
You know, didn't want to...
maybe reveal that or did so in small doses.
It wasn't until in--
until I was actually really invested into
the relationship that that stuff kinda came out.
Jamie took the news in stride, however.
After all, whatever treatment she was receiving
appeared to be working.
She was full of goals and dreams
and ambition.
Pleasant to be around.
But not long after they moved in together,
Melissa's demeanor changed.
She started losing a lot of...
desire to do anything outside of the house.
I mean, just her health
and mental state kinda deteriorated a lot.
She also lost her job
as a graduate teaching assistant.
She had been fired because of inappropriate e-mails
and threats she was making
to both the professor she worked for and other students.
She defended that it was blown out of proportion,
it wasn't as bad as Ohio State was saying.
She wasn't able to teach again,
but she was actually able to continue her education there.
Jamie stood by her through the crisis, however.
He was not wanting to leave her,
and trying to help her.
I just thought it was due to some maybe depression issues.
And she was bipolar
and not always compliant with her medicine.
Or maybe it was hormones.
After she was fired,
Melissa realized there was another
big change in their life.
She told me she was pregnant,
which I was super excited about.
I've always wanted to be a father.
In fact, according to Melissa,
Jamie was going to be a father of three.
She told him that she was pregnant
and that she was pregnant with triplets.
We have twins in our family,
and Jamie is a twin, and I'm a twin.
That was big, big news.
And we were expecting three little babies
at Christmas time.
So that spring,
barely a month after she had been fired from
her teaching job,
Jamie took Melissa to New York
and asked her to marry him.
( Jamie ) We were in Central Park.
I've never been there before.
She's never been there before.
And I just decided to do it right then and there.
Melissa immediately said "yes."
When they came home from New York,
they were both pretty happy and cheerful.
Everything seemed to be going perfectly for the couple.
But was something amiss ?
From the beginning, Melissa's attitude
about the pregnancy struck Jamie as strange.
She would never...
never let him go to the doctor's appointments.
Never wanted me to come along with her.
She wouldn't give him the ultrasound scans.
Then, at the beginning of what should have been
her second trimester,
Melissa made another surprise announcement.
She told him she had a miscarriage.
She had said she had gone to the hospital.
I was upset, very upset.
Like I said, this was something that I wanted.
Melissa appeared to be troubled by the loss, too.
For the next nine months, she battled her depression
and struggled to hold down a job.
She would get a job for a week or two.
She was usually fired after a while.
Melissa's behavior at home
was becoming increasingly erratic as well.
She was more withdrawn
and had gained weight
and laid around a lot, kind of living in that fog.
She started sleeping more, just all the time,
wouldn't really ever leave the bedroom.
And it was in their bedroom
that the next bizarre incident occurred.
One night, in the spring of 2010,
a year after her miscarriage,
Jamie woke up in the middle of the night
and found Melissa standing over him--
with a knife.
Like, she was mumbling something about how she couldn't sleep.
She didn't really threaten me in any way,
so I notified the police department
and notified her therapist of it in the morning.
After the incident, Melissa spent several days
in a mental health treatment center.
I was working at the time,
so I would visit her after my shifts
and she said she was sorry,
she said she would never do anything to hurt me
and was really truly sorry
and remorseful for what happened.
And when Melissa was released from the hospital,
Jamie brought her back to their apartment.
He was trying to deal with her mental illness,
not wanting to leave her,
and trying to help her,
wanting to be the guy that saves her.
I thought I could help her.
Thought I could.
Tried really hard to.
Plus, after this latest stint in the hospital,
Melissa appeared to be doing better.
Her therapist gave her new medication,
so that seemed to be working for her.
But then, at the beginning of October,
Jamie came home from work one day
and made another disturbing discovery.
House is kind of a mess.
She's nowhere to be found.
That wasn't all, either.
While Jamie had been at the office,
Melissa had taken all his possessions
out of the apartment and thrown them away.
Everything went in the dumpster--
his diploma, his wallet.
I gave her a call and asked her where my stuff was.
She hung up on me.
I think at that point,
he realized it was time to-- to end this relationship.
In fact, Jamie loaded a few things into his car
and left that very night.
He was afraid if he told her face to face
that he was moving on
and that he was moving on with his life,
that something would go down,
so that's why he decided to go ahead and move out
when she was not there.
It appeared to be a wise decision.
Things got a little crazy
because that's when she started stalking him.
She would contact me
through phone calls, e-mails, texts.
The e-mails and text messages
became more and more threatening.
I let friends and family know what's going on,
obviously they are very concerned about me,
just like, you need to...
you know, if she does anything, you need to contact the police.
And when Jamie ignored her repeated pleas,
she began contacting him in person.
There's several instances,
documented by Jamie and by the people he worked with
at his company,
in which she would be in the parking lot
when he'd get off work.
She approached me every time, for the most part.
There was a couple times where
I would see her car just drive by.
In one instance,
Melissa even showed up at his cubicle
inside the building,
forcing Jamie to call security.
( Che ) He, like, grabbed her and took her out immediately
and took her downstairs and, you know, told her,
"You are not allowed to be in the building."
Clearly this girl can't get over
that our relationship is over.
But it was over, as far as Jamie was concerned.
In fact, after two years of dealing with Melissa's
mental illness,
Jamie was so relieved by the breakup
that soon after moving out,
he and some of his friends had gone out to celebrate.
A couple of us got together and, you know,
kind of threw what he called
a "dodging the bullet" party,
which was basically dodging the bullet of marrying her.
But Jamie would soon find out
that he hadn't "dodged the bullet" at all.
Coming up:
Melissa makes another appearance at Jamie's office.
And the police try to take her into custody.
I was prepared to shoot her.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
( narrator ) Dublin, Ohio, December 14, 2010.
30-year-old Jamie Hart was nervous
when he pulled into work that Tuesday morning,
anxious about his recent troubles
with his ex-fiancée,
30-year-old Melissa Stredney.
( Jamie ) Obviously with the threatening text messages
and e-mails, yeah, safety was becoming a concern.
Melissa had been extremely upset,
even angry about their breakup two months earlier.
( Scott ) She... to be blunt,
would harass him with telephone calls,
text messages, e-mails.
She stalked him in the parking lot of NCO
on at least two occasions.
And that morning, when Jamie pulled into the parking lot,
she was waiting yet again.
( Jamie ) I recognized her, but I didn't--
I knew it was her but she still looked drastically different
than the person I knew.
And there she is, awaiting me,
and I'm like, "What are you doing here ?
Um... why are you here ?"
According to Jamie, Melissa said she wanted to talk.
And she wasn't going to take no for an answer.
She tells me, "Get in my car or else..."
She basically pulled a gun on him and threatened him.
( Jamie ) She was literally pointing the gun
over the roof of the car,
pointing it directly at my, you know, head/face.
Jamie tried to remain calm.
I'm like, "Wait, you don't want to do this."
But Jamie's attempt to reason with Melissa
did little other than make her angry.
She was yelling at him to get into the car.
Obviously, he didn't want to get into the car
and she was very persistent.
This is witnessed by several people walking in,
people in the building
actually are able to look down on this.
One of the onlookers quickly called 9-1-1
and reported what was going on.
( Stephanie ) The caller told me she was at NCO Financial
and there is a female there with a gun
forcing a male into a vehicle.
They were, thanks to another 9-1-1 dispatcher
monitoring the call.
My partner, who was working the police channel,
already had officers on the way over.
Patrolman Kevin Rickenbacher
was one of the closest to the scene.
( Kevin ) I'm trying to get to the scene as fast as possible
in hopes to helping the subject out
before something bad really happens.
Meanwhile, back at the parking lot,
Jamie was still trying to defuse the situation.
I was trying to talk her down into it.
But he still refused to get in the car,
an act of defiance that finally pushed Melissa
to the breaking point.
I remember hearing the gun going off.
I remember standing for probably a tenth of a second.
Just really couldn't believe this was happening.
Then, as Jamie crumpled to the pavement,
chaos ensued.
My caller, she starts screaming,
"Oh my God, she shot him."
All the other 9-1-1 lines lit up in the background,
but I stayed on my call.
Although obviously distraught
over what she had just witnessed,
the caller managed to give the 9-1-1 dispatcher
a critical piece of information
as Melissa drove away from the scene.
The dispatcher quickly relayed the vital information
to the units already en route to the scene.
They aired the description of the vehicle,
they told us it was a white female
and she left the parking lot
coming northbound on Frantz Road.
And, while police attempted to intercept Melissa
and paramedics raced to the scene,
onlookers in the parking lot
did what they could to aid Jamie.
( Janis ) It was just really a miracle
that he survived.
The quick actions of his, um...
coworkers probably helped.
Some people saw the incident.
They rushed to my aid
and I kind of remember trying to talk.
Unsure what to do, a second cowoker
made another desperate call to 9-1-1.
Advised by the 9-1-1 dispatcher,
the onlookers at the scene
carefully rolled Jamie over.
This bullet struck him in the left eye,
traveled down through his sinus
and into his jaw.
I don't remember being in any pain.
I knew something was wrong,
but I didn't know what exactly.
I remember squeezing someone's hand
and them telling me to stay with them,
to keep squeezing their hand.
( Che ) People were crying,
everybody was shocked
because Jamie had always said that,
you know, she is going to shoot me,
she is going to hurt me
and, you know, you never, like,
never think that's actually going to happen.
While Jamie's coworkers waited for help to arrive,
police and EMTs converged on the area.
And one of them soon spotted a Chevy Cavalier
racing from the scene of the shooting.
Officer Rickenbacher was there
in a very, very short time
and just happened to see the suspect
fleeing Northbound on Frantz Road
just as she went by him.
I asked for the description again
to confirm everything-- matched up.
It was a female by herself.
The car matched up,
so I proceeded after that vehicle.
He was able to get right behind her.
Melissa ignored the sirens, however,
speeding away into morning rush hour.
( Kevin ) It did not appear that she was going to stop
before she got to the Frantz Road,
US Route 33 intersection,
which is real busy during rush hour.
And if she wouldn't stop for a police siren,
what were the odds she would stop for a traffic light ?
Knowing that she just shot a guy in the head
and probably killed the guy,
I was concerned that she was going to kill somebody else
if she got through that intersection and didn't stop.
He had to force her into a stop
right before one of our major intersections.
I was running out of options.
Desperate to stop Melissa
before she could speed through the busy intersection
and put other motorists at risk,
Rickenbacher revved his cruiser's engine
and closed in on the fleeing Chevy.
His decision was to ram the car
and bring it to a stop.
He did what we call a PIT maneuver,
which is a safe way to disable her vehicle
and stop her.
I hit her car in the left rear corner,
which spun her.
The car spun off the road and skidded to a stop.
She ended up perpendicular with my car
and I put the hood of my car
up towards her driver's door
so she couldn't open it up and get out and flee.
But was that her only option ?
We didn't know if she still had
the gun on her or not.
And if she did, the situation could turn deadly.
It was going to be who got out of the car first
and could put the best shot down
to take the other party out.
I was prepared to shoot her.
So, knowing that Melissa had just shot a man,
Officer Rickenbacher quickly stepped out of his cruiser,
drew his gun and ordered Melissa to put up her hands.
Coming up:
The EMTs scramble to save Jamie.
I remember being in the helicopter.
And Melissa makes a statement to the police.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
( narrator ) Dublin, Ohio, December 14, 2010.
At approximately 8:00 a.m. that morning,
30-year-old Melissa Stredney
was stranded on the side of the road.
She had been run off the highway by the police officer
that had just ordered her to put up her hands, or else.
This was obviously someone who had just either
just killed someone or had tried to kill someone.
I was prepared to take her out
if she didn't comply.
Minutes earlier,
Melissa had shot her ex-fiancé, Jamie Hart.
The 30-year-old had been gunned down
in the parking lot outside the office where he worked.
Fortunately, you know, we had people on the phone
who were watching the situation as it unfolded
and we actually had a witness hear the gunshot
and viewed the person being shot
and gave us a great description of the suspect
and the suspect's vehicle.
One of our patrol officers spotted the car
and they executed a stop on the vehicle.
What happened next would depend upon Melissa.
It could have been a gunfight.
Fortunately, it wasn't.
Melissa surrendered without a fight.
In fact, she wasn't even armed.
( Scott ) She had thrown the gun out the driver's side window
as she was driving up the road.
Of course, we didn't know that at the time.
Within moments, Melissa was handcuffed
and placed in the back of a cruiser.
( Kevin ) She pretty much had a blank stare,
kind of just like nothing had happened and,
"What are you guys doing ?"
Our patrol officers, they transported her back
here to the police department,
where she was processed for fingerprints, pictures,
then they took her clothes from her
and property, made sure she didn't have any other weapons.
Meanwhile, Jamie was on the way to the hospital.
( Che ) They life-flighted Jamie out.
The life flight actually landed, like, right in
the parking lot of our work.
He was conscious and speaking.
I remember being in the helicopter.
My vision actually came back in the helicopter.
I remember seeing lights
and then I actually remember speaking to
maybe one physician, maybe two,
me telling them, trying to tell them my name.
By then, Melissa was talking, too.
After taking her fingerprints and a mug shot,
the investigators sat her down in the interrogation room
for a formal statement.
She was calm.
She was willing to talk
and she basically told us everything.
Melissa started by basically admitting
that she was the one who had shot Jamie.
She admitted to driving to the parking lot,
waiting for him.
Although, according to Melissa,
she hadn't gone there to shoot him.
Melissa did admit to bringing the gun, however.
( Scott ) Her behavior was so erratic
that he would avoid her.
But that wasn't why she had shot him,
according to Melissa.
All she'll say is, is that it was an accident,
she didn't-- she didn't mean for the gun to go off.
In fact, Melissa claimed to be as stunned as anyone else
by what had just happened.
The thing that struck all of us was that
it didn't really seem like the suspect
understood the gravity of what she'd just done.
Melissa had a ready explanation as to why.
She was diagnosed as bipolar,
had been hospitalized before,
was under the care of a psychiatrist
and on medication.
But the medication hadn't always helped,
according to Melissa.
However, Melissa claimed there had been one bright spot
through all her troubles-- Jamie.
I think to Jamie, her mental illness
became apparent pretty quickly,
however, Jamie wanted to stay with her,
wanted to help her through the-- through her problems.
But then, after almost two years together,
Jamie had suddenly stopped helping--
inexplicably, according to what Melissa told the police.
She didn't seem remorseful at all in this,
and, in fact, blaming Jamie,
because of the way he treated her and the relationship
this was really his fault.
Melissa told the investigators that the breakup
had led to another breakdown.
In particular, Melissa claimed she had begun having
violent dreams.
And Jamie wasn't always the target of those dreams,
according to Melissa.
She obviously had some issues,
psychiatric issues.
A person in my estimate that needs treatment and medication
for the rest of her life.
Although in her interrogation,
Melissa claimed that the medication she had been taking,
and the treatment she received hadn't helped.
And it was in that desperate, sleep-deprived state
that Melissa said she had acquired the gun.
She had purchased a gun from a gun store,
um, she learned how to load it
and she learned how to use that gun.
Although, according to her, it wasn't to shoot Jamie.
The first time she ever fired the gun was
she was sitting in a parking lot
in a warehouse district in the middle of the night.
Instead, she had kept the gun
and taken it with her that morning
when she confronted Jamie in the parking lot.
She just snapped.
She...
she loved this individual,
the victim.
They had a two-year relationship
and...
I think the loss was too much for her
so she confronted him in the parking lot
with that firearm.
I think her intent was to shoot him.
That's what the investigators believed,
even if Melissa wouldn't admit it.
She, you know, tried to make an excuse.
The gun just went off accidentally.
But even if it was an accident, as Melissa claimed,
she said she should be punished for what she had done--
severely punished.
Coming up:
Jamie struggles to survive.
They induced me into a coma to stabilize me.
And Melissa fights to stay out of prison.
Does she have a viable defense of insanity ?
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
( narrator ) By the afternoon of December 14, 2010,
Melissa Stredney sat in the Franklin County, Ohio jail,
held on a whole host of charges.
( David ) Attempted ***, felonious assault,
kidnapping, tampering with evidence
for throwing the gun out the window,
and a gun violation called
improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle.
At a little before 8:00 that morning,
the 30-year-old had shot her ex-fiancé, Jamie Hart,
outside the office where he worked.
She was obsessed with Jamie
and the relationship
and after he broke off the relationship,
her obsession grew and grew
until she... eventually broke
and confronted him that morning with a gun.
Eight or nine witnesses
actually witnessed her shoot him.
All the witnesses were
united in what they indicated.
I mean, it was definitely
she was trying to kidnap Jamie
and deliberately shot him in the head.
Miraculously, Jamie had survived
the point-blank shot to the head.
The bullet had entered directly in through the eye socket
and had actually traveled around his skull.
He was extremely lucky.
However, the 30-year-old's ordeal was far from over.
While Melissa sat in jail,
Jamie was in the ICU.
( Janis ) He was on a ventilator,
his head was all wrapped up,
and he couldn't communicate.
He was in a drug-induced coma.
( Jamie ) They induced me into a coma,
which I was in for a couple of days.
It wasn't until the 17th,
after Jamie had come out of the coma,
that he was finally able to speak to the investigators.
Friday morning, the detectives from Dublin
came and talked to me.
I was barely able to talk.
He was heavily sedated.
He was only able to provide
very, very limited information at the time.
I do remember me describing the gun
and telling them that she shot me.
Then, after the brief statement,
Jamie went in for the first of
what would become a string of surgeries.
( Janis ) He had three craniotomies,
and that's major.
They literally are cutting your skull in half.
They cut me from ear to ear,
literally pulled down my face,
took out...
one of my ribs to reconstruct my eye socket.
Finally, to hide the damage as much as possible,
the doctors fitted Jamie with a prosthetic eye.
I got the eye around surgery five.
Fortunately, he's a very strong young man
and was a very healthy person
and really recovered at amazing speed,
physically,
to all the trauma that had happened.
Although he will never be entirely the same as he was
prior to that fateful morning in the parking lot.
I was able to, you know, kinda get some of my
depth perception back,
but there are certain things I can't do anymore.
Jamie will carry these scars for the rest of his life.
And then there are the psychological scars.
( Jamie ) I was betrayed.
Obviously, this was someone I was going to marry,
so very betrayed.
And Melissa, the woman who betrayed him,
what would become of her ?
While Jamie struggled through surgery after surgery,
the prosecutors prepared to take her case to trial.
We had a lock-tight case as far as...
did she commit the offense.
We had witnesses who saw the situation develop,
the crime occur and the suspect flee.
They even had the gun Melissa had pitched out the window
as she fled,
recovered within hours of the shooting.
It didn't take us too long to locate the gun.
We only had about a mile, a mile and a half of roadway
to backtrack.
But there was still one wild card in play.
The question from the beginning was,
is does she have a viable
affirmative defense of insanity in this case ?
Despite the fact that she had earlier told the investigators
that she deserved the death penalty,
Melissa and her attorneys argued
that she was not in her right mind
at the time of the shooting.
I think she was using it.
I mean, that was the only...
that was the only card she could play.
And much like the fact that she'd been the shooter,
there was little doubt that Melissa was mentally ill.
Even Jamie's family conceded that much
when questioned by the investigators.
She obviously had some emotional issues,
some psychiatric issues.
Jamie had even come to believe that Melissa's pregnancy
and miscarriage had all been fake.
I never got any real details on whether she was or wasn't.
I tend to believe...
now... that it was all a ruse.
He never had any medical evidence at all
that any of this even actually occurred.
Could Melissa's mental state lead to an acquittal ?
Not necessarily.
In Ohio, the affirmative defense
of not guilty by reason of insanity,
a person has to show that
because of a severe mental defect or disease
they did not know
the wrongfulness of their actions.
And that's where Melissa's defense immediately
ran into trouble.
Her conduct afterwards clearly shows
she knew what she was doing was wrong.
She fled the scene,
she got rid of evidence, she claimed it was an accident,
so those factors negate her defense of-- of insanity.
You have mental illnesses,
but you mentally knew exactly what you were doing.
That was the official opinion, too.
With the defense's approval,
the prosecutors brought in a psychiatrist
to perform an evaluation of Melissa
while she was awaiting trial in the spring of 2011.
They came back and saying,
"Well, while she does have a severe mental illness,
"she did in fact know
the wrongfulness of her actions."
By the end of the spring,
with the insanity defense looking like
more of a long shot than ever,
Melissa's attorneys abandoned all hope
of taking her case to trial.
That's when plea negotiations began in earnest.
Jamie's family had strong feelings on the matter,
considering that Melissa had come so close
to committing ***.
I really felt that she should get life in prison,
because it was just really
a miracle that he survived.
But life in prison was never really a possibility,
according to the prosecutor.
The most she could possibly get under the law
was 19 and a half years.
And, as far as the prosecutors were concerned,
it was unlikely that Melissa would-- or even should--
serve that much time.
Though she knew the wrongfulness of her act,
she did have a severe mental illness,
she was bipolar, under medication,
decomposing mentally,
which, while not a defense, in our estimate
was certainly mitigation.
In light of that,
the prosecutors decided to extend
what they thought was an extremely generous offer,
given the circumstances.
We went to the victim
and discussed the matter with him
and we came up with an offer of 15 years in prison.
But when the prosecutors presented the offer to
Melissa's attorneys at the beginning of June,
the negotiations immediately broke down.
Strangely enough, she was okay with the 15 years,
said, "That's fine,
but I will not plead to the attempted ***."
At first, Jamie resisted the idea of allowing Melissa
to plead guilty
to the lesser charge of felony assault.
( Jamie ) Attempted *** is what she did.
You don't shoot someone in the head
and not have her plead to attempted ***.
I mean, that was--
I felt for what I went through,
that's the charge I wanted.
I desperately wanted her to plead guilty to that.
Coming up:
Melissa and Jamie face off in court.
This was going to be the first time
that I actually saw her since the incident.
And she has one more surprise for her former fiancé.
It was bizarre.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
( narrator ) It was June 21, 2011,
when Melissa Stredney walked into
a Franklin County, Ohio courtroom.
The 30-year-old was charged with attempted ***,
accused of shooting her estranged fiancé,
Jamie Hart, in December of 2010.
He's extremely lucky he survived.
I would say
that probably a miracle that he survived
and is doing as well as he is.
Obviously I lost my eye.
I lost some nerve issues,
but other than that,
I'm doing remarkably well.
Melissa was in court that morning to plead guilty to
felony assault and tampering with evidence,
part of a plea deal her attorneys had worked out
with the prosecution.
The evidence against her was overwhelming
so a plea deal was probably
the smart way to go, at least for her.
In exchange for her guilty plea,
Melissa would receive a 15-year sentence.
Under Ohio law at the time,
15 years was 15 years,
she will not get out early under that.
At least I know where she is going to be
for the next decade and a half.
But first, the man she had shot would face her in court
for his victim's impact statement.
This was going to be the first time that
I actually saw her since the incident.
Melissa, on the other hand, appeared to have no anxiety
about her court appearance.
She looked like she was light-hearted.
It was bizarre.
It-- she seemed to be enjoying herself,
enjoying the attention.
And once had Jamie read his statement and Melissa rose
to make her own, things got even more bizarre.
She-- she turned to the victim,
who was in the courtroom
and said she forgave him.
I don't think she acknowledged,
recognized, talked about
the tragedy that she had caused this man.
She didn't offer any explanation why she did what she did.
Didn't apologize.
Even Melissa's own attorney was taken aback by her behavior.
Her lawyer actually tapped her on the shoulder and--
and said, "You know, maybe you need to say something
about being remorseful,"
and she made some kind of statement, like,
"Maybe I shouldn't have ran.
Maybe I could have called 9-1-1."
Melissa's statement was a bitter disappointment for Jamie.
( Jamie ) Who does such harm to someone
and then is not sorry about it
or does not at least voice that they are sorry about it ?
I mean, how could you--
How could you not say you're sorry ?
The answer, of course,
lay within Melissa's mental illness.
It's not rational to shoot someone in the head.
But in the end,
even mental illness couldn't entirely excuse
what Melissa had done
or defer the 15-year sentence she received
upon pleading guilty.
I think everybody around her recognized,
this was a bad situation and a dangerous situation
and people were trying to help her,
but in-- but at the end of the day,
it was her own choices.
Even if she said sorry, I mean, that's...
that's just empty words to me at this point.
♪♪