A Lebanon woman’s self-defense claim didn’t add up to police, and now she’s been charged in the shooting of her boyfriend.
Richard ‘Ricky’ E. Grow Jr. lost his spleen and part of his liver after Kayla M. Crane intentionally shot him in the chest with a 9mm Taurus pistol on March 31, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Crane, 35, was originally charged April 10 with unlawful carrying of a handgun, but police said at the time they were still investigating and that more charges were possible.
The Boone County Prosecutor’s Office on Monday added charges of aggravated battery, a level five felony; domestic battery resulting in serious bodily injury, a level 5 felony; domestic battery by means of a deadly weapon, domestic battery and possession of methamphetamine.
Grow was moving from one downtown Lebanon apartment to another when he spent the night with Crane on March 30 in her Evans Street home, police reported. He borrowed her car early March 31, and the pair argued when he returned, according to court records.
She called 911 a short time later to report that a man was sitting on her doorstep and yelling for help, but she didn’t tell dispatchers he was her boyfriend, that he attacked her, or that she shot him in self-defense, Lebanon Police Detective Bryan Spencer wrote in the new probable cause affidavit.
Evidence contradicted a self-defense claim, Spencer wrote.
Crane’s 7-year-old daughter was in another room at the time of the shooting and was not injured, police reported.
Police found methamphetamine in Crane’s house and she claimed it belonged to Grow, but a lab test revealed that she had used meth, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Crane is being held without bond in the Boone County Jail while the Boone County Probation Office evaluates her status after the new charge, according to court records.
She was convicted of possession of methamphetamine in 2021 and 2022, and the felony convictions make it “a crime for her to possess/carry a firearm,” Spencer wrote in the affidavit.
Crane asked Boone Superior Court II Judge Bruce Petit last week to free her through the county’s pre-trial release program.
“I have been an almost perfect probationer,” she wrote, adding, “No failed drug tests.” She is a Sunday school teacher and runs a small business, she also told Petit in her letter.
Crane is being held without bond in the Boone County Jail.