She Allegedly Shot Him on a Tractor After Court Denied Him Restraining Order. She Was Just Arrested After 5-Day Manhunt

A Virginia woman accused of killing a man the day after a judge denied his request for a protective order is in custody following a statewide manhunt, police say.

The Harrisonburg Police Department announced that they had successfully apprehended Katelynn Hipes on April 22, five days after authorities began their search for the murder suspect. 

Hipes, 22, had been in the county at the time for a court hearing on assault charges involving Small.

Court records show that she was found not guilty of those charges on April 16, and later that day the court also denied a request by Kevin Small, 48, for a protective order.

Small was shot dead dead two days later.

Hipes allegedly shot Small directly in the chest while he was on a tractor outside his home in Shipman, according to an arrest warrant obtained by PEOPLE.

The warrant also says that the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office identified her as a suspect in the case after the victim’s grandfather provided an eyewitness account of what he saw happen that day.

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Deputies responded to a report of an ‘unresponsive male’ on April 18, the NCSO said in a release.

They arrived to find a “male subject outside of the residence who had a single gunshot-wound to the chest cavity,” the NCSO said in a release.

Emergency medical technicians ultimately pronounced Small dead at the scene.

In a GoFundMe created to raise money for his funeral, Small’s family describes him as a “devoted son, brother, and uncle” who “never met a stranger.”

Harrisonburg was one of the five jurisdictions in the state where authorities believed Hipes might be hiding out in the wake of police obtaining a warrant for her arrest. 

The agency made the arrest with assistance from the Special Weapons and Tactics team, crisis negotiators and U.S. Marshals. Police also issued a shelter in place for residents of the neighborhood late Tuesday afternoon.

Those precautions were not necessary in the end as Hipes was arrested without incident, according to police.

Hipes’ hideout was 70 miles south of Shipman, and approximately 40 miles southwest of her residence in Augusta County.

She made her first court appearance on Wednesday, where she was arraigned on charges of second-degree murder and felony use of a firearm.