Their mother is serving a 100-year sentence after their father was killed during what began as a routine pickup in Starke.
STARKE, Fla. — The two boys were strapped into the back of their father’s vehicle when a routine daycare pickup turned into the crime that would remove both parents from their daily lives: their father was fatally shot and their mother was arrested, prosecuted and ultimately sentenced to 100 years in prison.
Nearly a year after Christopher Travis Jones, 37, was killed outside Auntie Lili’s Child Care Center, a judge accepted a negotiated plea agreement from Mindy Osteen and imposed consecutive sentences totaling a century in prison. The July 15 resolution ended the criminal case without a trial. Yet relatives who spoke after the hearing focused less on the mechanics of the agreement than on the two children who were present when Jones was shot and who must now grow up with the consequences. Osteen was also ordered to have no contact with Jones’ family.
Jones’ great-aunt, Phyllis Sands, told WCJB after the hearing that the boys had been “totally traumatized.” She said they had since been adopted by a woman outside Jones’ family and predicted that they would eventually want to understand what happened. Her comments reframed a sentencing measured in decades around a pair of children for whom the event is not simply a closed criminal file. Bradford County sheriff’s Maj. George Konkel had made a similar observation soon after the killing, saying the children had, in practical terms, lost both parents in a single incident.
The case began on July 25, 2025, outside the Starke child-care center. Authorities said Jones arrived to pick up the two boys and Osteen appeared shortly afterward. Surveillance footage described by investigators did not begin with an argument. Instead, Osteen approached the family and hugged the children, and reports said she also hugged Jones. He gathered the children’s belongings, placed the boys in the back seat and secured them in their car seats. The scene looked so ordinary that Konkel later said the footage resembled a typical pickup until, without an obvious confrontation immediately beforehand, the situation suddenly changed.
Investigators said Osteen was carrying a handgun inside a backpack. After Jones got behind the wheel, authorities said she removed the weapon and began shooting into the vehicle. Jones screamed, got out and tried to escape as more shots were fired, according to descriptions of the surveillance recording and arrest report. The children remained behind in the car. None of the children at the daycare was physically injured, but law enforcement accounts emphasized that the boys were close to the gunfire and could be heard reacting as their father tried to get away.
Jones ran toward the daycare and entered the first part of the building, but investigators said a second security door was locked. That left him in the entrance area as Osteen followed. The arrest report said she fired additional rounds there. Six other children and two employees were inside the daycare, according to law enforcement. Investigators also documented statements attributed to Osteen during the shooting, including that Jones had to die and that she wanted the “monster” to die. Another statement referred to a redacted person whom she said Jones could not kill. Authorities did not publicly establish what she meant.
Deputies arrived while Jones was still alive. According to the arrest investigation, he identified Osteen as the shooter. Osteen then approached law enforcement and said she had acted in self-defense. Jones was transported to a hospital, where he died. The case initially proceeded on a first-degree murder accusation along with allegations tied to the children, the firearm and property. The eventual plea meant the prosecution did not have to prove first-degree murder to a jury, and Osteen’s self-defense statement was never tested in a completed trial.
The final agreement centered on second-degree murder and other felony offenses. WCJB reported that Osteen pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, aggravated assault with a firearm, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, possession of a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school and shooting into an occupied vehicle. Other reports citing court records have described the plea as no contest and used somewhat different wording for individual firearm counts. The central outcome is not disputed: Osteen accepted a negotiated resolution, received consecutive terms totaling 100 years and was prohibited from contacting Jones’ relatives.
For Jones’ family, the sentence followed a year of publicly defending the man they lost. His sister, Melanie Russo, challenged Osteen’s claim of self-defense in interviews after the shooting. Russo said she had watched her brother deal with what she described as harassment and domestic abuse and had urged him to leave the situation. The Bradford County Sheriff’s Office said Osteen had a 2020 domestic battery conviction and that the agency’s last violent encounter involving both adults had been in April 2024, when charges against both were eventually dropped. Those earlier events provide context but do not by themselves establish a motive for the killing.
Russo and other relatives also acknowledged that Jones’ history was complicated. News4JAX reported that Russo said her brother had previous trouble with the law but had been trying to change his life. A fundraiser she organized after his death described his recent years as a period of redemption centered on his sons. It said he worked to provide for them, remain present and become a father they could look up to. His obituary used similar language, describing his two boys as the driving force behind changes he had made.
The fundraiser sought help with funeral expenses and future support for the children. Those needs were identified almost immediately after the shooting, before the prosecution had moved beyond its first stages. By the time the plea hearing arrived the following summer, the boys’ circumstances had changed again. Sands said they had been adopted outside Jones’ family. The sentencing therefore marked only one part of a much longer transition for children who experienced the killing and then the permanent absence of both parents from their household.
The setting of the shooting made that impact especially stark. It happened not in an isolated location but during an activity families repeat every weekday: picking children up from care. Investigators said other children and staff were still inside the building, and the surveillance account shows how quickly the normal routines of buckling children into car seats and preparing to drive home gave way to gunfire and an emergency response. Konkel described that contrast as one of the most haunting parts of the evidence because there was little on the recording to signal what was about to happen.
That recording became a central source for reconstructing the sequence but did not answer every question. The statements attributed to Osteen suggested she believed or claimed that Jones posed a threat, while Jones’ sister presented a sharply different account of their relationship. Publicly available reporting does not establish a verified immediate threat from Jones during the pickup. Investigators said the visible interaction before the shooting appeared calm. Because the case ended in a negotiated plea rather than a trial, there was no jury proceeding in which prosecutors and defense lawyers publicly tested a full motive theory or self-defense argument.
What the court could resolve was Osteen’s criminal liability under the plea agreement and the punishment attached to it. What it could not undo was the children’s presence during their father’s death or return either parent to their lives. Sands said after sentencing that she hoped Osteen would never again be released into the community. For the boys, the legal case is now closed, but the family’s own statements make clear that its consequences are expected to extend far beyond the July 2026 judgment.
Author note: Last updated August 22, 2026.