BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Just after 8 a.m. on April 18, a man called the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office Communications Center to report his girlfriend had been shot.
“Her friend was showing her a gun... she said it went off,” he told the operator.
A five-page affidavit made public Saturday sheds new light on the arrest of Alice McClure, 36, who faces a manslaughter charge in the death of her friend — identified as Heather Bowen — after allegedly shooting Bowen in her forehead.
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The shooting occurred in the living room of McClure’s residence along Cinnamon Teal Drive near Mims some hours after her fiance had left for work, the affidavit states. According to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, deputies arrived to locate McClure and the man who called 911, directing them outside and later to a secure location for interviews. Deputies reported hearing McClure make spontaneous statements that she shot Bowen while showing her a gun and did not understand why it fired.
Deputies were told there was no animosity among anyone in the individuals’ friend group, having all met out of state and routinely visiting each other for around five years. Bowen and the man had arrived in Mims around two weeks prior to the shooting and both planned to work for DoorDash that particular morning, yet the man decided he wanted to sleep in, he said.
As the man slept, McClure told deputies she and Bowen began a conversation that transitioned to the topic of self-defense. Following statements about how Bowen kept a knife under her pillow, McClure said she personally “no longer needed to do that since she kept a gun by her bed now,” according to deputies.
After McClure retrieved a Ruger .38 Special from her nightstand, she brought it to Bowen, at which point she told deputies it began to slip from her hand, she “squeezed” it, and it went off.
The noise woke the man, who reported he could not tell whether the sounds McClure was now making across the home were crying or laughing. McClure “busted” through a door to where the man was sleeping, “visibly upset and verbally incoherent,” unable to call 911 when asked to do so, the man told deputies.
Bowen was pronounced dead April 20 at Holmes Regional Medical Center, deputies said.
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As the investigation continued, McClure said during her third interview with law enforcement that she was untruthful in initial talks with deputies.
While she said at first that the hammer of the revolver had not been cocked prior to the shooting, she told deputies now that she knew the hammer was in its firing position as she held it with her thumb and attempted to depress it by pulling the trigger, which discharged a single round into Bowen’s forehead, the affidavit describes.
McClure was released from jail Wednesday on a $15,000 bond amount.
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