Hospital findings and onboard video revealed that Amazon driver Jasmine Taylor had been shot before her van struck a fence.
LAWRENCE COUNTY, Mo. — When a witness called 911 after an Amazon delivery van ran off a southwest Missouri road and crashed into a fence, the scene initially presented itself as a serious traffic wreck. What investigators learned afterward turned the crash into a homicide case that ended this week with Thomas Coy receiving 40 years in prison.
The path from roadside crash to murder prosecution is central to the case of Jasmine Sky Taylor, a 23-year-old delivery driver who was working along County Road 2152 near Wentworth on Feb. 5, 2025. Taylor was taken from the scene to Mercy Hospital Joplin. Hospital personnel later alerted authorities that she had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Taylor died four days later. Coy, whose home was near the route she had been driving, eventually admitted shooting her, removing her from the van after it crashed and leaving her beside the road.
Investigators had an unusual source of evidence available inside the delivery vehicle itself. A camera in the Amazon van captured part of Taylor’s final drive, according to the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities said the footage showed the vehicle traveling near Coy’s driveway and Taylor slumping over while she was still behind the wheel. The van then continued off the roadway and into a fence. The recording gave detectives a timeline that connected Taylor’s injury to a specific stretch of road before they had a complete explanation for why she had lost control.
The hospital’s discovery supplied another critical piece. Responders at the crash scene had not initially treated the event as an obvious shooting, according to local accounts of the probable cause statement. After Taylor reached the hospital, medical staff found the projectile and notified law enforcement. Detectives were then able to reconsider the crash in light of the wound and compare that finding with what could be seen on the van’s recording. The combination of medical information and vehicle video transformed the direction of the investigation within hours.
Detectives went to Coy’s residence and questioned him. Authorities said Coy, after being advised of his rights, admitted shooting Taylor with a pellet rifle. He told investigators he saw the Amazon vehicle crash after the shot. He further acknowledged going to the van afterward, taking Taylor from the driver’s seat and placing her in the roadside ditch. Those admissions linked Coy not only to the shooting but also to the scene after the vehicle left the road. Taylor was still alive following the attack and remained hospitalized until her death on Feb. 9.
Investigators later described a sequence that began before Taylor reached the area of Coy’s driveway for the final time. They said Coy saw an Amazon vehicle traveling along the county road, went back to his residence to get the air rifle and returned outside to wait for it. Taylor then approached along the route. Authorities said she was shot while driving. That account established that the encounter was not a spontaneous dispute after the crash. The available reporting also indicates that Taylor and Coy did not know one another before the shooting.
Taylor’s death changed the legal case. Coy had first been arrested while Taylor was still alive and initially faced an assault charge. After she died, the Lawrence County prosecutor’s office upgraded the case to first-degree murder. Armed criminal action was also charged. The first-degree murder count remained part of the prosecution as the case advanced through pretrial proceedings. In September 2026, however, Coy chose not to go forward with a jury trial that had been scheduled to start later that month.
On Sept. 14, Coy pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed criminal action. The plea resolved the question of criminal responsibility without requiring prosecutors to call witnesses or play the van footage before a jury. It also meant the final conviction was for second-degree rather than first-degree murder. The court set sentencing for Nov. 2. At that hearing, a judge imposed 30 years for the murder conviction and 10 years for armed criminal action, with the sentences ordered to run consecutively.
The result was a 40-year prison term. The sentence is the most significant new development since the guilty plea was reported in September and replaces the earlier uncertainty over how much prison time Coy would receive. Regional news organizations that reviewed court information reported the same division of the sentence: three decades for second-degree murder followed by an additional decade for armed criminal action. The Missouri Department of Corrections is responsible for the resulting state prison term.
The publicly available record does not establish a definitive motive for why Coy targeted Taylor. Neighbors told local reporters that Coy had previously complained about delivery vehicles traveling too fast on the road. Those comments have been repeatedly cited in coverage of the case, but authorities did not publicly confirm that frustration over vehicle speed was the reason for the shooting. Investigators at one point said they had information concerning a motive but declined to disclose the details then. No verified account reviewed for this story supplies a fuller official explanation.
That unanswered question distinguishes motive from the evidence used to establish what happened. Investigators did not need to rely solely on speculation about why Taylor was targeted. They had the van recording, the hospital’s findings, the location of the crash and Coy’s own statements. Those elements supplied a physical and chronological account of the shooting even though the reason behind it remained uncertain. Because Coy pleaded guilty, the evidence was never tested through a full trial, where prosecutors and defense lawyers would otherwise have presented competing accounts before a jury.
Taylor was born in Joplin in December 2001, according to her obituary, and was 23 when she died at Mercy Hospital Joplin. Regional reporting has also connected her to Northwest Arkansas. Her work on Feb. 5 placed her on a routine delivery route in a rural part of Lawrence County. The public facts of the case show no known relationship between her and the man who shot her. That lack of a prior connection was one reason law enforcement officials described the killing as difficult to understand when discussing the investigation publicly.
The type of weapon also became part of the public discussion. Authorities consistently described it as a pellet-style or air rifle, and some local reports identified it as a .22-caliber air rifle. A Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office investigator noted in earlier coverage that such weapons can be dangerous. In this case, the consequences were fatal. The fact that the projectile was not immediately recognized at the crash scene also complicated the earliest response and made the hospital notification an important turning point in the investigation.
Viewed as a whole, the case moved through several distinct stages: a crash report, a medical discovery, a shooting investigation, an assault arrest, a murder charge, a planned trial, a guilty plea and finally sentencing. Each stage changed what authorities publicly knew and what legal consequences Coy faced. The Nov. 2 judgment completed that progression by converting the September plea into a specific punishment and bringing the prosecution to a close without a trial.
After sentencing, KY3 reported Coy was still being held in the Lawrence County Jail while awaiting transfer to state prison. The county’s inmate roster subsequently recorded his release from that facility early Nov. 6. The reviewed records did not identify a specific Missouri prison assignment, so his precise current institution could not be confirmed. His sentence, however, is final at the trial-court level: 30 years for Taylor’s murder and another 10 years for armed criminal action.
Author note: Last updated Nov. 6, 2026.