Rachel Wooten’s same-day message became part of the evidence jurors considered before convicting her fiancé of first-degree murder.
PONTIAC, Mich. — Before Rachel Wooten was fatally shot inside the Highland Township home she shared with her fiancé and their infant, the 23-year-old mother sent a family member a stark message: She was afraid for her life.
More than a year later, that same-day communication became evidence in the murder trial of Michael Webb. An Oakland County jury convicted Webb on July 16 of first-degree murder and felony firearm in Wooten’s April 15, 2025, death. Prosecutors said Webb shot her in the neck at very close range, then claimed the gun had discharged while he was cleaning it. Investigators said the evidence in the home did not support his accident account. Webb is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 7 in Sixth Circuit Court.
The prosecutor’s public account does not disclose what led Wooten to send the message, how long before the shooting it was written or what else she told the relative. The family member has not been identified in the official material reviewed for this report. Those missing details prevent a full reconstruction of Wooten’s final hours. What prosecutors have confirmed is narrower but significant: On the same day she was killed, Wooten communicated fear for her life, and the jury was presented with evidence of that communication as it considered whether her death was an accident or an intentional killing.
That evidence gave the trial a dimension that was not part of the earliest public description of the case. When deputies were first called to the residence on April 15, they encountered an immediate physical scene: Wooten had suffered a fatal gunshot wound, Webb was wounded but alive and the couple’s 6-month-old child was inside the home unharmed. Authorities said Webb had made the 911 call, reporting that he had shot his fiancée and himself. Wooten was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators then had to determine whether the explanation Webb offered for those injuries could be reconciled with the evidence around them.
Webb said the shooting was accidental while he was cleaning his gun. Authorities did not accept that account. According to the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, Wooten was shot at very close range, and Webb’s nonfatal wound apparently came from the same bullet. Investigators said evidence recovered from the home was inconsistent with an accidental shooting. Public statements do not provide a complete forensic breakdown of how they reached that conclusion, and the available reports do not reproduce the full trial testimony. The jury nevertheless heard enough evidence to convict Webb of the most serious homicide offense charged.
The April 2025 investigation quickly turned into a murder prosecution. Webb was charged with first-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of a felony and was arraigned in 52-1 District Court in Novi. At the time, county officials identified him as 21 and described Wooten as his fiancée. They said the two lived together and had a child together. Prosecutor Karen D. McDonald called Wooten’s death an apparent domestic violence tragedy while stressing, at that charging stage, that the criminal case still had to proceed through court. As with any defendant, Webb was presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The trial in 2026 changed that legal status. Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys Shellbe Sanborn and Allison Krueger presented the case in Sixth Circuit Court. The jury found Webb guilty of both first-degree murder and felony firearm. The prosecutor’s post-verdict statement was considerably more definitive than her comments when Webb was charged. McDonald said Webb had killed Wooten, called 911 and lied about what happened. She also said the guilty verdict could not undo the loss experienced by Wooten’s child and other loved ones.
Wooten’s text message is especially notable because it predates the shooting rather than describing events after the fact. In criminal trials, a victim’s prior statements can carry different legal significance depending on why they are offered and the evidentiary rules governing the case. The public materials reviewed here do not state under what specific evidentiary rule the message was admitted or reproduce any judicial ruling concerning it. It would therefore go beyond the available record to describe precisely how the judge instructed jurors to use it. The prosecutor’s office has said only that jurors heard evidence that Wooten told a family member she feared for her life that day.
That distinction matters because the message should not be made to say more than the record supports. Officials have not released a complete account of previous incidents between Webb and Wooten, nor do the available public records establish what specific event or behavior caused her fear. The message is documented evidence of what Wooten communicated; it is not, by itself, a public chronology of the relationship. The murder conviction rests on the jury’s consideration of the evidence presented at trial as a whole, including the circumstances of the shooting and the prosecution’s challenge to Webb’s explanation.
Even with those limits, the case fits a broader pattern that Oakland County officials cited in discussing Wooten’s death. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found a substantial connection between intimate partner violence and homicides of women. A CDC study of female homicide victims in participating jurisdictions from 2003 through 2014 found that more than half of cases with known circumstances were related to intimate partner violence. More recent national surveillance data have likewise found intimate partner violence to be a major precipitating circumstance in homicides of females. Those figures provide public-health context; they do not establish facts that were not proven in Webb’s individual case.
The presence of the couple’s infant adds another lasting consequence. The child was only 6 months old when deputies found the baby unharmed inside the residence. Authorities have not released further identifying information about the child, and there is no need for that information to understand the prosecution. In announcing the verdict, McDonald emphasized that although the jury could impose legal accountability through its decision, it could not change the fact that Wooten’s child would grow up without her mother. That impact remained central to the prosecutor’s comments more than a year after the shooting.
The conviction also sharply narrows what remains to be decided in the trial court. Michigan law makes life imprisonment without eligibility for parole the punishment for an adult convicted of first-degree murder. Webb was also convicted of felony firearm. Michigan’s felony-firearm statute provides a two-year term for a first conviction under that provision, with that term served consecutively and before the sentence imposed for the underlying felony. The public case materials reviewed for this report do not indicate a previous felony-firearm conviction for Webb.
Sentencing therefore will not reopen the jury’s determination of guilt. Instead, the Oct. 7 hearing will formally impose the consequences of the verdict and conclude the sentencing phase in Sixth Circuit Court. Webb can pursue whatever post-conviction or appellate rights are available under Michigan law, but no specific appeal or post-verdict challenge was identified in the public materials reviewed as of Aug. 24.
For Wooten’s family, the record now contains two very different moments from the same day in April 2025: a private message in which she said she feared for her life, and an emergency call after she had been shot. Between them lies much that has not been publicly disclosed. The jury, however, heard the evidence prosecutors presented and rejected Webb’s claim that the shooting was an accident. He now stands convicted of first-degree murder and felony firearm, with sentencing set for Oct. 7.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 24, 2026.