Police say Pennsylvania Magistrate Judge Sonya McKnight got her lick back against her ex-boyfriend... but not by slamming the gavel.
Michael McCoy told Susquehanna Township investigators he invited McKnight over on Feb. 10 to break the news that he no longer desired to be in a relationship with her. Police said McCoy tried multiple times to end things prior to this day but was unsuccessful. The affidavit from McKnight’s eventual arrest states that the evening before the shooting, she took a spare key and entered McCoy’s home, per NBC News.
He came from work to her sitting on the couch, unbothered and in her pajamas. McCoy walked back out the door to a bar, the affidavit says, then came back to McKnight begging to talk. At that point, McCoy wasn’t up for a conversation and even tried to phone her mother to convince her to leave his house.
“Oh, you’re serious?” McCoy recalled McKnight saying. Thinking she caught the vibe that it was truly over, McCoy said he went to sleep. However, he woke up to straight chaos.
Read more from NBC News:
He told detectives that he was asleep for about an hour or two when he woke “up with massive head pain” and could not see.
“He begins screaming and he hears Sonya McKnight say, ‘Mike what did you do to yourself,’” the affidavit says.
Authorities said that McKnight allegedly tried to convince her ex-boyfriend that he had shot himself. McCoy repeatedly stated to police that he did not shoot himself, according to the document.
Detectives determined that McKnight’s interview with them “was found to be deceptive” and the gun used was registered to her, the affidavit alleges. A test conducted within an hour after the shooting also found gun residue on her hands, according to the affidavit.
McCoy is now blind in his right eye after sustaining a gunshot wound that went through his right temple and out the left side of his head, the report says. This isn’t the first time McKnight was accused of shooting a significant other.
According to a report from PennLive, McKnight’s ex-husband, Enoch, went to her home to help her move furniture in May 2019 while the two were going through a divorce. Enoch told investigators that while he was carrying a chair, McKnight shot him in the hand and groin and called him a cheater. McKnight maintained that she shot him in self-defense and the Attorney General’s Office declined to criminally charge her.
In the McCoy case, McKnight is charged with first-degree attempted murder and aggravated assault.