She Was Driving Home When a Random Bullet Killed Her

$7K reward offered in Micalla "KK" Rettinger's death
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Apr 30, 2019 3:57 PM CDT
Random Bullet Hits, Kills Woman as She Drives Home
In this undated photo provided by the University Of Northern Iowa Athletic Department on Tuesday, April 30, 2019, is Micalla Alexis Rettinger.   (University Of Northern Iowa via AP)

Micalla "KK" Rettinger was driving home at 2:30am Sunday on an Iowa highway when a bullet came through her window, hitting her and then one of her two passengers. The 25-year-old was able to drive to a highway exit, but was later pronounced dead at the scene, NBC News reports. Police believe the incident was random and are looking for the shooter; they say it may have been someone hunting nearby, either legally or illegally. There is a $7,000 reward in the case. "It seems so out of the ordinary and so random and senseless that I can't even get my mind around it," Rettinger's father tells the Des Moines Register.

Her father says Rettinger, who was studying to become a dentist, had likely just picked her boyfriend up from work at a bar; KWWL reports that all three people in the car were returning home from work at the time. Rettinger's boyfriend Adam Kimball, 32, was injured by the same bullet but is expected to survive. The third passenger was not hit. "One of the first things we looked into, is to whether these people were involved in a dispute or something that had occurred earlier. The passenger said there was nothing like that," the local police major says. "They simply left work and drove here. There wasn’t a lot of traffic. So [they didn't] cut something off ... They simply left work and driving home, there was nothing unusual, nothing that got their attention." ("It's absolutely a random, freaky thing," says the mother of another young woman recently killed at a highway rest stop.)

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