RACINE, WI – A $250,000 cash bond was set by a Racine County Court Commissioner for a woman accused of shooting Victor Perez, her boyfriend.
Angela Scheit, 38, of Racine, was charged by the Racine County District Attorney’s Office Wednesday with first-degree intentional homicide, use of a dangerous weapon.
If convicted of the charge, Scheit faces a life-long sentence in prison.
According to the criminal complaint, officers with the Racine Police Department responded to a residence at 1814 Villa St. for a report of shots fired. Inside the home, the officers found Scheit in front of the home holding a .380 Smith & Wesson handgun. She told the officer that she shot Perez, 45, of Racine.
Perez was going to kill her and she did not know why she shot him. At the time she shot Perez, she didn’t know if he was armed. But she knew he had a gun either under his mattress or (had one) on him, Scheit told the police.
When the officer went into the home, he found Perez laying on the kitchen floor. He also had what was initially thought to be a handgun in his waistband, but it later was determined that it was not a gun.
Shot twice in the chest, the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office determined during an autopsy that the cause of his death was multiple gunshot wounds.
When investigators interviewed Scheit, she said she was in the kitchen with Perez. She had just taken a photo of him with her .380 caliber gun and he gave it back to her. Then she received a notification on her phone, which “infuriated him and he began to approach her.”
Scheit told police she fired the gun several times knowing that she was firing at him.
She admitted to shooting Perez, but she told them it was in self-defense.
“Eventually he was going to kill me, and I had no choice,” she said during the interview with police. Officers noted that Perez did not pull a gun on her, while Scheit said she believed he was going to kill her.
The two had been dating since early November after they met on Facebook. “Initially he was loving,” Scheit told the police. But then he became “controlling and violent.” She didn’t want to be with him and did not want him to move in with her. But, she said, he threatened to “burn her house down” if she did not let him move in with her.
A preliminary hearing was set for 8:30 a.m. Dec. 19 in front of Racine County Court Commissioner Alice Rudebusch.