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A woman who shot and killed an army veteran after an ‘absurd’ Walmart car park argument won’t be charged.
The deadly confrontation was caught on camera outside the North Lauderdale, Florida, Walmart, showing two people quarrelling over a parking space on June 30.
As the situation escalated, Bart DiGuglielmo, 62, was fatally shot.
The suspected shooter was named as Melissa Payne, who was on a shopping trip with her niece and niece’s baby.
The two motorists tried to snatch the same parking spot, and a ‘brief stalemate’ ensued, according to a memo by the Broward County State Attorney’s Office.
Payne has argued she was acting in self-defence, giving her immunity from prosecution under Florida’s stand your ground law.
Stephen Zaccor, the homicide trial unit’s division chief with the state attorney, wrote in the memo: ‘A dispute over a parking space. In a Walmart parking lot. The facts surrounding the June 30, 2026, homicide of Bart DiGuglielmo are as tragic as they are absurd.
‘There is relatively no dispute about what actually happened because the entire incident was captured by various video recording devices.’
The confrontation was captured on a Tesla dashcam and by an eyewitness filming nearby.
It shows how DiGuglielmo left his car and went into the store before coming back.
Shoppers reported hearing him say he was going to ‘mess her car up’ and ‘**** her **** up,’ the memo details.
He then sped off, parked up and walked back to Payne’s car looking ‘visibly angry’ while looking at the woman, witnesses said.
Payne then exited her car with a gun in one hand and a phone in the other while she called her husband.
She was heard yelling: ‘If you keep coming up to me, I’m going to ******* shoot you!’
The man continued to approach Payne ‘aggressively’ despite the warnings while Payne backed away.
DiGuglielmo is said to have continued and gestured ‘as if he was going to damage’ her car, according to the memo.
When he turned back and approached Payne again, she fired her gun, hitting him in the stomach.
Payne’s husband told the police her wife told him during the call ‘bae, I shot. Call the cops.’
Detectives concluded that Payne was in a public place and had a right to be there.
Because she was not a convicted felon, she also had a right to own and carry a firearm ‘therefore she was not doing anything unlawful at the time she used deadly force,’ Zaccor wrote in the memo.
He said the state could not prove that Payne’s fear of death or bodily harm was not reasonable.
Under the stand your ground law, she was not required to wait to be attacked or to retreat if her fear was reasonable before using deadly force, he concluded.
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