A 14-year-old boy has been charged as an adult with first-degree murder after authorities said his 41-year-old mother was shot in the head at the family’s home south of Cheyenne on March 7 and later died at a Colorado hospital.
The case has drawn attention in Wyoming because it moved from an emergency call about a gravely wounded woman to an adult murder prosecution against her teenage son within days. Court records and sheriff’s statements identify the victim as Theresa McIntosh and say the boy first described the shooting one way, then gave investigators a more direct account. The immediate stakes now are both legal and personal: prosecutors must prove a premeditated killing, while a family and a community are left trying to understand how an argument inside a home turned into a homicide case.
Deputies were called at 12:47 p.m. on March 7 to the 2300 block of Pine Avenue, just south of Cheyenne city limits, after a report that a woman had been shot. The Laramie County Sheriff’s Office said deputies arrived to find McIntosh unconscious but still breathing, with a gunshot wound to the back of her head. She was taken first to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center and then airlifted to UCHealth in Fort Collins, Colorado. She died later that day. The basic timeline became more detailed after an affidavit of probable cause was filed in Laramie County Circuit Court. According to that document, the shooting followed about 90 minutes of conflict inside the home over an electronic tablet that investigators said the boy had taken from one of his mother’s cleaning clients. The affidavit says the argument took place in the teen’s bedroom, where McIntosh had been working on a puzzle on the floor, and that the shooting happened while the dispute was still unfolding.
What investigators say happened next is central to the case. Court records say the teen, identified in public reports as Havoc Leone, first told deputies that his mother had shot herself. The affidavit says he later gave other versions, including one in which he suggested there had been a struggle and the gun may have gone off accidentally. Investigators said those explanations did not fit the medical evidence. The court record says deputies learned the handgun was a black Taurus 9 mm that belonged to McIntosh and was usually kept in her vehicle. According to the affidavit, the boy told investigators he had taken the gun from the glovebox about a week earlier after a separate fight over a math grade and hid it in a boot in his closet. The document says that during the March 7 argument, McIntosh asked for a password to the tablet and was told it was written in a notebook in the bedroom closet. Investigators allege he retrieved both the notebook and the gun, kept the weapon out of sight, tossed the notebook toward her and then fired while she was bent down. Prosecutors will have to prove that sequence in court, but it is the account now driving the charge.
The records also show how much of the case may turn on statements made inside the home before and after the shot was fired. The affidavit says McIntosh accused her son of theft during the argument and used insulting language toward him. Investigators wrote that the boy said he was angry and had struggled to express how much he hated her. The record also says he told deputies he had thought before about killing his mother when she made him do things he did not want to do. Those statements are serious because prosecutors often use them to argue intent, especially in a first-degree murder case. At the same time, they remain allegations described in a charging document, not facts tested in a trial. Another key witness is the victim’s common-law husband, who court records identify as the boy’s biological father. According to the affidavit, he was in the basement playing video games while wearing noise-canceling headphones and heard a popping sound that he first took for a balloon. When he went upstairs, the document says, he found his wife wounded and called 911. He then tried to help her until deputies arrived.
The setting and sequence of events add to the weight of the case. This was not a public shooting or a confrontation on a street corner. Investigators say it happened inside a family home in unincorporated Laramie County, during a dispute that began with a stolen device and widened into a history of earlier family conflict. The affidavit describes one earlier turning point: a fight about a “D” in math that prosecutors say led the boy to take the gun from his mother’s vehicle days before the shooting. If that allegation holds up, it may become an important part of the state’s argument that the killing was planned rather than impulsive. The case has also raised broader questions, though not ones the court file can answer on its own, about how a firearm stored in a vehicle became accessible inside the house and how much the adults around the teen knew about earlier tension in the home. Public reports say the boy had been in counseling and was taking medication for mental health issues, but no court filing available so far explains whether those facts will play a role in the defense, competency questions or future sentencing arguments.
The legal path ahead is already clearer than many of the emotional questions surrounding the shooting. The boy has been charged with felony first-degree murder and local reports say he is being prosecuted as an adult. Reports on the case also said bond was set at $500,000. That charge carries the highest level of criminal exposure in Wyoming, and the adult filing means the proceedings will not stay entirely within the juvenile system. The public record so far is still limited to the sheriff’s basic statement, the probable-cause affidavit and follow-up reporting from local outlets. There has been no public trial testimony, no plea and no detailed defense response in the material now available. It also remains unclear whether an attorney had entered an appearance for the teen at the time of the latest reports. The next steps are expected to include court appearances on the charge, further motions over evidence and a closer examination of the interviews, physical evidence and forensic findings that led deputies to move from an apparent suicide narrative to a homicide case.
Outside the courtroom, the story has landed as a family tragedy before anything else. McIntosh was identified in reports as a 41-year-old woman who ran a cleaning business and whose death sent emergency crews, deputies and hospital staff into motion within minutes. The affidavit’s account of the father’s reaction gives the case some of its starkest human detail. According to the document, he did not want to believe what investigators feared had happened and tried to treat the wound while waiting for help. Those details do not decide guilt, but they explain why the case has spread quickly through Cheyenne and beyond. The public facts are grim and unusually intimate: a mother wounded in her son’s room, a father moving from confusion to emergency aid, and investigators trying to sort out different stories against the physical evidence at the scene. For now, the criminal case offers the main path to a fuller account, but it will unfold much more slowly than the shock that followed the shooting.
As of March 15, the case stands as an adult first-degree murder prosecution tied to the March 7 shooting and the death of Theresa McIntosh later that day. The next milestone is the defendant’s next court appearance and any new filings that clarify the evidence, defense strategy or trial timetable.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.