On January 15, 2013, the parking lot of Hazard Community and Technical College in Hazard, Kentucky, became the setting for a deadly domestic shooting. Just after 6:00 p.m., 21-year-old Dalton Lee Stidham approached a vehicle outside the campus building and opened fire with a semiautomatic pistol. He killed his former girlfriend, 20-year-old Caitlin Cornett, and her uncle, 53-year-old Jackie Cornett. A third victim, 12-year-old Taylor Cornett, Caitlin’s cousin, was critically injured and later died at the hospital.
Though the shooting occurred on college grounds, none of the victims were students at the school. The violence stemmed from a custody exchange involving Stidham and Caitlin, who shared a two-year-old child. The family had agreed to meet in the parking lot, but the situation quickly escalated. Stidham, armed and waiting, carried out the attack with precision and left three members of the same family fatally wounded.
Police arrived quickly and found Stidham still on scene. He was taken into custody without incident and charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. He had no significant criminal record prior to the shooting, and there was no evidence of a struggle during the exchange.
The Hazard shooting highlighted the risks associated with domestic violence and custody conflicts, even in seemingly public or neutral locations. What appeared at first to be a random campus incident turned out to be a premeditated act of personal violence, one that left a small community reeling from the loss of two adults and a child.
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Hazard shooting victims laid to rest
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