Footage reportedly shows a Griffin, Georgia, police officer come home to find his wife with a gunshot wound to the head.
Matthew Boynton, 20, discovered his wife Jessica, 19, lying in a pool of blood in a closet. Barely clinging to life, Jessica spent three weeks in a coma before waking up, according to 11alive.
But the story is far from over: Jessica now claims the April 15 incident was a staged suicide—constructed by her husband. Michael went out with a fellow cop to eat the night of the incident. He allegedly left after Jessica questioned him about his infidelity, leaving his gun at home.
Michael received the following text from Jessica’s phone shortly before the alleged suicide attempt:
“I can’t do this anymore. Take care of Tollin and Tyler Please tell them I love them everyday. I have been suffering for a while now and no one has noticed. Here lately I have not been able to recognize the person I see in the mirror. This is not the first time I have had suicide thoughts. I love you and the boys.”
Jessica challenged the validity of the texts, pointing out that her phone was unlocked and the number of mistakes in the sent messages. Michael and his mistress supposedly exchanged 68 texts on the night in question.
“Give me a few. To text back long story I’ll tell you later,” Michael messaged the woman as police were dispatched to check on Jessica.
Michael supposedly returned to the home to hear a gunshot. From there, he called officers for backup.
“I believe I just heard a shot fired coming from my residence. I just came up the stairs, two rounds… be advised I smell gun smoke, and I can’t get an answer at the door,” he said over a radio at approximately 1 a.m.
Authorities found a .40-caliber Glock issued to Matthew under Jessica’s body. While in the hospital, Jessica told investigators that she didn’t remember picking up Michael’s gun or how she got shot.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) cleared Michael and he returned to the force on June 6.
Dr. Vernon Henderson, chief of Trauma and Critical Care at Atlanta Medical Center, also questioned officials’ findings that the wound was self-inflicted. Dr. Henderson, who treated Jessica the morning she came in and a month thereafter, claimed there was no investigation conducted at the hospital and that the GBI didn’t contact him until July 20.
The couple were married on October 24, 2015, and have two sons. Hours before the shooting, Jessica found a notebook—which detailed her plans to divorce Michael—on top of a pile of clothes with pages missing.
“Hard to believe someone shot themselves when everything in my life was just beginning to seem right,” she wrote on the Justice for Jessica Facebook page this month. “We were filing for divorce and I had a job orientation that Friday.”
[Feature Photo: Facebook/Police Handout]
