Screenshot: Metro Nashville Police Department

The Tennessean reported that a 26-year-old Nashville woman named Katie Layne Quackenbush was charged with attempted murder on Monday for shooting 54-year-old Gerald Melton on August 26, sending him with critical injuries to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where he remains today.




Local police detectives said in a press release that Melton, who is homeless, was “trying to sleep on the sidewalk,” around 3 a.m. that morning when he “became disturbed by exhaust fumes and loud music coming from a Porsche SUV.”

According to police, an argument between the two parties ensued after Melton asked Quackenbush to move her Porsche. After a while, Melton allegedly walked back to the area where he’d been trying to sleep. Then Quackenbush got out of her car, armed with a gun, followed him, and the dispute started back up, at which point she fired two shots at Melton, wounding him in his abdomen.


Jesse Quackenbush, Katie’s father, is insisting upon a different version of events, one where Melton accosted Katie and her friends who were innocently hanging out inside the Porsche. According to Jesse, Melton threatened to kill Katie for apparently no reason and made sexist remarks. “She didn’t try to kill this guy,” Jesse proclaimed Monday night, just after Katie was arrested. “She had no intention of killing him. She didn’t know she hit him.”

According to Jesse, Katie, a single mother with a five-year-old son, “had one eyewitness in the front seat.”