A Minnesota woman was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of her boyfriend. In her statement to police, she said she shot her partner because she “didn’t want to listen to him anymore.”
25 years in prison for woman who killed her boyfriend because he hit her
On March 5, 2020, Stephanie Clark, 31, was arrested for the murder of Don Juan Butler, who was her romantic partner. “I shot him because he was hitting me,” the woman told a neighbor who heard the multiple bullet detonations.
The mother of a 5-year-old boy, Stephanie met Don Juan, a convicted felon, on a dating app. Immediately afterward, the man moved into Stephanie’s apartment and began behaving abusively, according to the defendant’s defense attorney.
It wasn’t many days before Butler began exhibiting abusive behavior, coupled with his eagerness to control her every step and move, the New York Post detailed.
According to the investigations, “Butler began to take control of every aspect of Clark’s life, including when she could leave, where she could go, who she could talk to, who she could see, where she could work and what she could buy.”
“He forbade her from working and interacting with men”
Despite the young woman’s defense alleging the episodes of domestic violence she suffered for months, there was no abatement of the charges.
The subject’s uncontrollable jealousy forced her to quit her job in the construction sector, and to take another job with a lower salary.
So testified the young woman’s defense attorney, Eric Doolittle, in mentioning what he ordered her to do: “He forbade her from working and interacting with men.”
And on one of the many nights of arguing, Clark and Butler fought fiercely on March 5, 2020, and taking a .45-caliber pistol, she fired it at her boyfriend until she ran out of bullets.
She then picked up another revolver and shot him in the head.
Police reported that upon arriving at the crime scene they found Clark beaten and bruised on her face. Butler’s body was shot in the back, side and head.
The victim left a 5-year-old child unprotected at the time, who witnessed the entire argument and the shooting started by his mother.
