A woman charged with murdering a professional cyclist in Texas tracked her movements on the exercise app Strava before shooting her, prosecutors say.
Kaitlin Armstrong, 35, is charged with murdering Moriah “Mo” Wilson, a 25-year-old elite cyclist who had allegedly been romantically involved with the same man as Armstrong.
“The last thing Mo did on this Earth was scream in terror,” prosecutor Rickey Jones said in opening statements at court on Wednesday.
“You’ll hear those screams.”
He alleged Armstrong used Strava to trace Ms Wilson, stopping her car near the apartment where she was staying in Austin and shooting her three times, Sky News’s US partner NBC News reported.
Ms Wilson’s body was found with multiple gunshot wounds in May 2022.
A week later, Armstrong fled the country with a fake passport. She was captured at a hostel in Costa Rica in June 2022 and extradited back to the US.
Armstrong was in a relationship with professional cyclist Colin Strickland for about three years before the couple went on a break, according to an arrest affidavit.
While they were on a break, Ms Wilson and Mr Strickland had a brief relationship before he and Armstrong got back together.
Ms Wilson was visiting Austin for a race at the time of her death and saw Mr Strickland on 11 May, 2022, the day she was killed, prosecutors say. He lied to Armstrong about his whereabouts that day, according to a police statement.
Mr Strickland has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the case.
Armstrong had access to Mr Strickland’s messages on a laptop at their shared home, according to prosecutors, and she could have determined where Ms Wilson was staying based on data about her bike ride earlier that day posted on Strava.
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Bullet casings found near the scene match Armstrong’s handgun and her car matches the SUV seen near the apartment, prosecutors said.
But the defence lawyer argued Armstrong is trapped in a “nightmare” of circumstantial evidence.
“You didn’t hear [from the prosecution] that not one witness saw Kaitlin Armstrong allegedly commit this murder. Not one,” defence lawyer Geoffrey Puryear told the court. “Because there isn’t one.”
Armstrong has pleaded not guilty. She could face up to 99 years in prison if convicted.
The trial is expected to last two weeks.
