Another suspect charged in nurse's murder
The girlfriend of one of the defendants accused in the slaying of Butler native and nurse Caitlyn Kaufman in Tennessee has been charged in the investigation.
Nashville Metro police Wednesday arrested 21-year-old Dimeneshia Carter on a charge of accessory after the fact for allegedly harboring a fugitive, who they identified as James Edward Cowan, her boyfriend.
Police said Carter acknowledged staying with Cowan and providing him transportation, knowing that he was wanted by authorities on an arrest warrant in Kaufman's Dec. 3 murder.Undercover police detectives and agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms surveilled the couple Tuesday as she drove him in a rental car to a housing complex in a Nashville-area neighborhood from a nearby motel.Investigators believe Cowan had been staying at the motel for the past few days. Authorities arrested him at the housing complex. He is charged with homicide in Kaufman's death.Police allege Cowan was with co-defendant Devaunte Hill, 21, when at least six shots were fired from their vehicle into Kaufman's sport utility vehicle on Interstate 440.Kaufman, who studied nursing at Clarion University, was driving to work at a hospital. A police officer found her deceased in the driver's seat of the vehicle, which was resting against a guardrail, and the rear driver's side window had been shot out.
An autopsy determined she was struck once in the shoulder, and that she likely died just minutes after being shot.Hill, of East Nashville, was arrested Dec. 11 on a charge of homicide. He and Cowan are both being held without bail in the Downtown Detention Center in Nashville. Carter is there on $75,000 bond.Police said that in the rental car that Carter was driving, they seized two semi-automatic pistols, 126 rounds of ammunition, one pound of edible marijuana gummies, 7 ounces of marijuana, 5.3 grams of powder cocaine, 238 Xanax bars and 56 Adderall pills.Charges stemming from those items are pending, police noted.A search of Cowan upon his arrest turned up $2,159 in currency.Kaufman was a 2012 Butler High School and 2018 Butler County Community College graduate and worked as a nurse in the intensive care unit at St. Thomas West Hospital. Her family resides in Chicora.
