Dan@BcTelegraph.com
A Starke woman who gunned down the father of her children outside a daycare last summer as their children watched from his car was sentenced Wednesday to 100 years in state prison.
Mindy Michelle Osteen, 35, pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and four other felonies in the July 25, 2025, shooting death of Christopher Travis Jones, 37, at Aunt Lili’s Child Care Center on West Washington Street, near Bradford High School. Circuit Judge James M. Colaw accepted the plea and imposed the sentence July 15 in Bradford County circuit court.
Six children and two employees were inside the daycare at the time of the shooting, and children were in Jones’ vehicle, according to the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office arrest report.
Deputies said doorbell camera video showed Jones picking up children at the daycare just before 6 p.m. when Osteen approached his vehicle with her hand inside a backpack. As Jones sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, she fired three shots at close range, stepped back up and fired two more, the report states.
Jones, bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds, ran toward the daycare and became trapped between its double doors, where Osteen, after clearing a jam in the pistol, fired three more shots at him, deputies said. The video captured her saying “Please let the monster die” and telling Jones, “You got to die, Chris.” Jones can be heard on the recording pleading, “Help me” and “I’m not killing nobody.”
When deputies arrived, Osteen put her hands up and said, “I’m right here y’all. I done it in self defense,” according to the report. Jones was pronounced dead at Starke’s emergency room about an hour later.
Investigators traced the murder weapon, an Arex Delta 9mm handgun, to Larry Vice, 73, who told deputies Osteen had been living with him for about a month and that the gun was missing from his kitchen drawer.
Osteen was originally charged with first-degree premeditated murder, two counts of aggravated child abuse, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and grand theft of a firearm.
Under the plea agreement negotiated by defense attorney Canaan Goldman and Assistant State Attorney Ryan King, she pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of second-degree murder along with the firearm counts, discharging a weapon within 1,000 feet of a school and shooting into a vehicle. The state dropped the remaining counts, including the child abuse charges.
The 100-year sentence runs consecutively across the five counts: 50 years for the murder, five years for the gun theft and 15 years each on the three remaining charges, including a three-year mandatory minimum on the felon-in-possession count. Osteen received credit for 355 days served in the county jail.
