BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP) — A Whatcom County, Wash., woman has been sentenced to nearly 28 years on her second-degree murder conviction for fatally shooting her 48-year-old boyfriend at their Everson home.
The public defender representing 47-year-old Lynda Holman argued at trial that she accidentally fired the shotgun that killed Mark McCollum as she attempted to put it back on its rack in February 2010. Whatcom County Prosecutor Dave McEachran told jurors that was physically impossible.
At her sentencing Monday, Holman cried and asked for mercy, telling Judge Charles Snyder, “It was totally an accident.”
But Snyder chose the top end of the standard sentencing range, noting this was not the first time Holman had been involved in taking a life. In 1995, she was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and first-degree robbery in Skagit County. The prosecutor says that case involved the death of a man Holman and her then-boyfriend met in a bar.
