JACKSONVILLE, FL- A bullet doesn't know what lies in its path. It could be a window, a sign or in this case…a young woman asleep in her bed.
It was December 15th, 2007. Donna Mills, 29, was asleep in her Confederate Point Road apartment.
"Sometime around 3 a.m., police were dispatched out to the apartment complex because of the sound of gunfire," tells Detective Ray Reeves with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit.
He says the responding officers checked the Preserve apartments, but in the darkness of night didn’t see anything and left. Around 11 a.m. officers were called back out to the apartment for a bullet strike to a car. In the light of day the officers saw multiple shell casings and bullet holes - one right through a downstairs window.
"A maintenance man lets the officer in and he discovers that Donna Mills had been shot and she had died in her apartment," explains Det. Reeves.
An innocent victim of a stray bullet.
In the months after Donna’s death, her family and friends handed out thousands of fliers pleading for information from the public about who fired off the deadly shots. Information that never came.
Donna Mills was 29-years-old, worked at Vystar Credit Union, loved photography and was known as "Dee Dee" by her family growing up. They remember her giving heart, spending time volunteering for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
She wasn't a person with enemies.
"There were no other associations, this wasn’t a targeted person, it just seems completely senseless," tells Det. Reeves.
So what happened in that parking lot on that cold December morning? Officers say they found 10 other items that had been struck by gunfire including the car, a sign and Donna's window. Det. Reeves says some type of scuffle happened in the area right in front of her window.
"It was contained in this area, the gunfire was here, it wasn’t out on the roadway itself," he explains.
There was no security camera footage, but casings left at the scene.
"From the casings that we have there, that matched the one that killed Donna Mills, we do know that. Some of the others, we can’t tell if it was one or multiple or if it was, for lack of a better word, a gun battle. We just don’t know. Or if it was a random shooting," tells Det. Reeves.
He says in the wake of it people were afraid, no one would provide a description of the shooter. Leads didn’t pan out and though evidence has been re-tested, they are hoping someone in the public can help bring them new tips.
"Maybe someone remembered hearing someone talk about this or maybe someone has mentioned some details of this. Maybe someone who wasn’t home that day heard from someone else, even if it is hearsay we want to know," he says.
If you have any information, please call the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office at 904-630-0500. You can also call CrimeStoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS. A separate $11,000 reward is being offered by The Justice Coalition for information that leads to an arrest and conviction.
For more local cold cases, visit the Project: Cold Case database at www.projectcoldcase.org