A 36-year-old pregnant woman who was fatally shot in her vehicle along an Orlando roadway last month was “stalked and targeted” by her killer, who “laid in wait” for her to leave her grandmother’s apartment, according to newly public records in the case.
An affidavit filed in Orange County Circuit Court shed new light on the Oct. 13 killing, though it did not reveal a motive. The accused, 35-year-old Sheila Pierre, denied knowing the victim, Christina Fulword, and said he “wasn’t capable of shooting a woman,” the document states.
However, Detective Teresa Sprague wrote that police pieced together digital and video evidence, including location data from Pierre’s phone and footage from a highway service plaza, to trace the Boca Raton man’s route from his home, to Orlando and back again after the killing.
Sprague wrote that Fulword was 26 weeks pregnant when she was shot. Her baby was delivered by emergency Cesarean section. Police said last month the baby was in critical but stable condition.
The killing was initially reported as a crash at 2:15 p.m. Oct. 13, but rescuers arrived at Orange Center Boulevard at Ohio Avenue to find Fulword shot and unresponsive in her Jeep Grand Cherokee. She was taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center and rushed into surgery.
Police would later determine that Fulword had pulled over on the side of Ohio Avenue minutes earlier and turned on her hazard lights. That’s when a Chevrolet Impala pulled up next to her and someone inside fired shots into her driver’s side window, wounding her.
As the Impala sped off, the Jeep — which was still in drive — rolled slowly south on Ohio, over the curb, through the median and across a sidewalk and a vacant lot, before crossing onto Orange Center Boulevard, where it struck a Honda Civic that was stopped at a traffic light.
Detectives determined that Fulword had been at her grandmother’s apartment at a nearby senior community prior to the shooting. Surveillance footage from the complex showed the Impala there, arriving around 1:45 p.m., then waiting for her to leave and following her.
“[T]he victim appeared to be stalked and targeted by the driver... because the driver laid in wait for several minutes for Christina to exit the apartments, and appeared to know when she would be leaving to pick up her children from school,” Sprague wrote in the affidavit.
Police determined the Impala was a Hertz rental car that had gone un-returned from the Fort Lauderdale Airport location in August. The rental company activated the car’s Onstar system, which allowed police to track it to an auto repair shop in Pompano Beach.
Broward County deputies went there and took into custody six people, including Pierre. In an interview, he suggested he’d been given the Impala by two other men, so that he could sell the car for parts, the affidavit states.
But photos from the SunPass system and a service plaza told a different story, detectives said, showing the Impala was driven from South Florida to Orlando by a man wearing the same clothes that Pierre had on when he was apprehended at the auto body shop.
Location data from Pierre’s phone also showed his travels, police said, tracing his path from Boca Raton to Orlando, then back onto State Road 408 to begin the return trip at 2:20 p.m. Surveillance video showed him arriving in the Impala at the body shop around 5 p.m., detectives said.
“Sheila Pierre denied knowing Christina Fulword by name and photograph, yet he is the sole person in the suspect vehicle at the time she is stalked, shot, and left dying in the middle of the street,” Sprague wrote.
Pierre is being held without bail at the Orange County Jail. He faces charges of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder.
jeweiner@orlandosentinel.com