A Sedgwick County jury convicted Amunique Cavitt of second-degree murder after prosecutors said she shot Norman Carter III on a north Wichita street in April 2024.
WICHITA, Kan. — A 21-year-old Wichita woman was sentenced to 13 years and nine months in prison after a jury found her guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of her boyfriend, Norman Eugene “Tray” Carter III, on his birthday in April 2024.
The sentence closes the trial phase of a case that moved from a midday street shooting to a first-degree murder charge and, later, a lesser conviction. Prosecutors said the killing followed an argument between the couple that spilled from a Jeep onto North Minnesota Avenue. The verdict carried a domestic violence finding, placing the case in the category of intimate-partner homicide and giving the sentence added weight for Carter’s relatives, Cavitt’s family and a Wichita neighborhood that saw the violence unfold in broad daylight.
Police said officers were sent at about 12:11 p.m. on April 23, 2024, to the 1400 block of North Minnesota Avenue after reports of gunfire. When they arrived, they found Carter, 34, with multiple gunshot wounds to his upper body. Officers began lifesaving measures before Sedgwick County EMS took him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:01 p.m. The date mattered beyond the calendar. It was Carter’s birthday, a fact later repeated in court coverage and in the obituary that described him as a devoted father. Investigators said the shooting did not begin at that curbside location. According to accounts later summarized in court records and local reporting, Cavitt and Carter had been driving together earlier that day when an argument escalated. By the time the confrontation reached the intersection near Minnesota Avenue and 13th Street, the dispute had become public, sudden and fatal.
What happened in the minutes before the shooting became a central part of the case. Cavitt told police that Carter slapped her, hit her several times on the head and tried to strangle her during the argument inside the vehicle. Officers noted scratches on her neck, according to the probable cause account reported in local coverage, but no other visible injuries were publicly described at the time. Witnesses told investigators that Carter got out of the Jeep near the intersection. One witness said it appeared Cavitt then tried to hit him with the vehicle. Prosecutors later said she got out and fired multiple rounds. Charging documents reported in Wichita media said the gunfire continued after Carter fell to the ground. Police recovered seven shell casings from the grass near his body, a detail that helped frame the prosecution’s argument that the shooting went beyond a brief struggle and became an intentional killing. Some questions remained unsettled in public accounts, including exactly how the physical fight started and whether any evidence beyond witness statements and injuries inside the vehicle could fully reconstruct that moment.
The official response began quickly and stayed firm. Police detained a person of interest later identified as Cavitt, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, and booked her into jail that afternoon. Prosecutors charged her with first-degree murder, the most serious homicide count available in the case, and her bond was set at $1 million. She remained in custody as the case moved through pretrial hearings and toward trial. The shift from that original charge to the final conviction explained much about how jurors viewed the evidence. In December 2025, a Sedgwick County jury found Cavitt guilty of second-degree intentional murder rather than first-degree murder. That outcome meant jurors concluded the killing was intentional but not proven to be premeditated beyond a reasonable doubt, at least not to the level required for the top count. The jury also made a domestic violence finding, formally recognizing the relationship between Cavitt and Carter as part of the case. On Feb. 13, 2026, Judge Tyler Roush sentenced her to 165 months in prison, or 13 years and nine months.
Carter’s death also left a personal record that stood apart from the courtroom language. In his obituary, relatives remembered him as creative, passionate and smart, a man who loved sports, cars and family. They said he coached children’s basketball and treasured time with his daughter, Nakori. That portrait gave the case an emotional frame that court filings do not provide on their own. Public police statements were far more spare. Authorities identified him as a 34-year-old Wichita resident and described only the emergency response, the wounds and the detention of a person of interest. Between those two versions of the story, one personal and one procedural, the case took shape in public view. It became not only a homicide prosecution but also a record of how quickly a domestic dispute can move from a private argument to fatal violence on a residential block at midday, with neighbors, passing traffic and first responders entering the scene within minutes.
The legal path ahead is narrower now, but not entirely finished. With sentencing complete, Cavitt begins serving the prison term imposed by the district court unless an appeal is filed and a higher court orders some form of review or relief. Public reporting available after the sentencing did not identify any immediate appellate filing, and no further hearing date was publicly announced in the coverage tied to the sentence. In practical terms, the most important milestone has already happened: the first-degree murder case brought in 2024 ended in a second-degree murder conviction and a fixed term of years rather than a life sentence tied to a premeditated murder count. For prosecutors, the sentence marked a final courtroom result after nearly two years of litigation. For Carter’s relatives, it likely offered a formal measure of accountability without answering every factual dispute from the confrontation inside the Jeep. For the public, the case remains a sharp example of how witness accounts, shell casings, injury observations and charging decisions can shape the difference between the most serious charge filed and the verdict a jury ultimately returns.
There was little grandeur to the place where the case began, only a residential stretch of north Wichita where officers arrived to find a wounded man in the street and shell casings in the grass. The scene details that made their way into public accounts were ordinary in one sense and haunting in another: a Jeep, a neighborhood block, noon traffic, bystanders close enough to see whether the vehicle moved toward Carter, and officers trying to keep him alive before paramedics took over. That plain setting helps explain why the case drew broad attention in Wichita. It was not hidden away in an isolated field or behind closed doors. It erupted in view of a neighborhood, then stayed in the public eye through the charge, the bond, the trial and the sentence. Carter’s obituary called him “a loving father,” language that was later echoed in reports about the case. By the time the judge imposed sentence, the public record held two enduring facts side by side: a man died on his birthday, and the woman convicted of killing him will spend nearly 14 years in prison.
The case now stands at its latest fixed point: Cavitt has been sentenced, Carter’s family has a verdict and prison term, and the next formal development would most likely come only if appellate proceedings are started. As of March 16, 2026, the sentence of 165 months remains the clearest marker of where the prosecution ends and any review process would begin.