By the summer of 2025, Christopher T. Jones was trying to put distance between the hurtful life he had once lived and the soothing father he wanted to become.
The 37-year-old had a criminal past that included serious illegal substance-related offences, but the birth of his two sons had changed him. His relationship with their mother, Mindy Osteen, however, had not.
As Jones fought to move forward in life, Osteen became increasingly violent. Jones endured years of domestic mistreatment, verbal and physical, but no one came to his help.
Law enforcement ignored him, his family believes, because he was a man.
Eventually, Jones realized his kids would grow up in an environment dominated by anger and resentment, so he separated from Osteen.
She wouldn’t accept it. One day, when he went to pick up his two sons from daycare, she followed him.
Then she took his life in front of their children.
A father-of-two was fatally wounded by his ex after he went to pick their children from daycare
Melanie Russo, Jones’ sister, explained after the attack that the separation was supposed to be another step forward. Instead, she said Osteen continued stalking, threatening and physically attacking him.
Jones sought help, Russo said, but the warnings went nowhere.
On July 25, 2025, Jones arrived to collect his sons at Auntie Lili’s Child Care Center in Starke, Florida.
Osteen appeared three minutes later carrying a backpack. The children hugged their mother, and nothing initially appeared unusual. Then, after Jones strapped both boys into his vehicle, Osteen pulled a weapon from the bag and opened fire.
Bradford County Sheriff’s Office
Jones narrowly escaped the vehicle and ran toward the daycare, only to become trapped between its exterior entrance and a locked interior security door. Osteen followed him. His sons remained outside, their screams audible on the surveillance recording, as their father begged for help.
Becoming a father gave Jones a reason to leave his old life behind
The exact birth dates of Jones and Osteen’s children have remained private, but their eldest son was approaching his third birthday when Jones was attacked in July 2025. A younger boy followed, giving the couple two children who were still toddlers when their parents’ relationship collapsed.
But fatherhood arrived after a difficult stretch of Jones’ life.
A 2017 Bradford County Sheriff’s Office “Most Wanted” notice listed Christopher Jones with his exact February 15, 1988, birth date as wanted in connection with possession of illegal stimulants.
Florida corrections data also record a 2018 Bradford County sentence for the same substance possession under the name “Christopher Travis Jones.”
“Chris was a devoted father to two sweet boys who were the light of his life,” Jones’ obituary read.
His love for them was described as “the driving force behind his transformation,” while a fundraiser organized by Russo called his final years a “journey of redemption, love, and unwavering devotion to his children.”
According to the family, Jones worked every day to provide for the boys and become someone they could admire.
“His transformation was a testament to the power of love,” the fundraiser said, “and his boys were the reason behind it all.”
Osteen herself also had a complicated relationship with law enforcement
Jones and Osten’s life together had become troubled well before the homicide.
Local reporting found arrests linked to Osteen dating to at least 2013 involving allegations including battery, fraud, substance possession and illegal stimulant production.
Records also show a 2017 arrest in Alachua County on allegations of resisting an officer violently, followed by a Bradford County fraud arrest in 2018. By the time of Jones’ homicide, she was legally prohibited from possessing a firearm because of a prior felony conviction.
In April 2024, the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office recorded what it later described as its final violent encounter involving both Jones and Osteen before the incident.
Both were charged, but the charges against them were ultimately dropped. That meant there was no judicial determination establishing who had been the aggressor during that particular incident.
Jones’ family, however, had no doubts.
Russo described her brother as enduring “a lot of domestic ab*se on his end as far as verbal, physical, mental, emotional, everything,” while saying Osteen displayed serious instability.
By roughly late 2024 or early 2025, six to eight months before his passing, Jones and Osteen had separated.
The decision appears to have only intensified Osteen’s resentment. Jones was trying to move forward, rebuild his life and secure a future centered on their sons, while she kept forcing herself back into it through threats, harassment and confrontations.
With two toddlers tying them together, he could end the relationship, but he could not completely remove her from his life, and the more he tried to build one without her, the more volatile their encounters became.
“Every incident was reported. Authorities were notified. Nothing was done,” Russo said, explaining that her brother had grown frustrated with the police’s lack of action, and was already fearing for his life.
“Nobody took it seriously,” she said, “and that’s devastating because of how it ended.”
Being a male victim made it easier to dismiss what was happening
“People wanna stand up and speak for women all the time,” Russo said.
“Men can be victims too. Men can be victims too, and I saw it with my own two eyes. I saw him live through it.”
The problem extends well beyond Jones’ case.
According to a 2023 survey by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in seven American men has experienced physical violence from an intimate partner during his lifetime, while almost one in 24 has been stalked by one.
Bradford County Sheriff’s Office
Still, male victims can face an additional barrier when they try to describe what is happening: the widespread assumption that men are more likely to be perpetrators than people who need protection themselves.
That pattern was examined in a systematic review of 23 studies involving men subjected to domestic violence by women.
Researchers found that gender stereotypes surrounding mistreatment, fear of being dismissed or disbelieved, concerns about appearing weak and family pressures could all discourage men from reporting violence or seeking help.
Some victims also struggled with the perception that support systems and public messaging around domestic violence were primarily designed with women in mind, leaving them uncertain about where they belonged within that framework.
Jones became another example of this issue. By the time everyone was forced to recognize how serious it had become, he was already running for his life through the doors of his children’s daycare.
Jones’ sons watched helplessly as their mother attacked their father
The surveillance footage began with a scene so ordinary that Bradford County Sheriff’s Major George Konkel later said that was what made it especially haunting.
“It looked like the typical child pickup from a day care,” he said. “Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary.”
Jones arrived at Auntie Lili’s Child Care Center on West Washington Street and went inside for the boys. Approximately three minutes later, Osteen appeared outside with a backpack.
The children emerged with the daycare owner and hugged their mother. Jones followed, carrying their belongings before placing both boys into their car seats. Osteen remained nearby, watching as he secured them in the back. Jones then walked around the vehicle and sat behind the steering wheel with his door still open.
That was when Osteen reached into the backpack.
According to the arrest report, she pulled out an Arex Delta 9 mm firearm, walked directly toward Jones and fired three times. She backed away slightly, then approached again and fired two more rounds.
Jones screamed.
His two sons were still strapped into the back seat.
Wounded, Jones managed to get out of the vehicle and run. Osteen fired again and chased him toward the daycare.
He made it through the first door.
The second was locked.
In the video, Osteen can be heard characterizing Jones as a “monster” who was a danger to the kids
Jones was left trapped in a small vestibule, unable to reach the protected portion of the building while the woman pursuing him remained behind him.
Osteen followed him inside and continued firing. At one point, the weapon malfunctioned. Rather than stopping, investigators said she worked to clear the weapon and resumed the attack. Surveillance audio captured Jones moaning and, outside, his children screaming from the vehicle.
“Please let the monster d*e,” Osteen could be heard saying.
She later approached Jones again.
“You got to d*e, Chris,” she said, adding, “You can’t k*ll my kids.”
“Help me,” Jones replied.
When Osteen repeated the accusation, he answered, “I’m not k*lling nobody.”
The arrest affidavit never explained what Osteen meant by her accusation, and investigators found no publicly reported evidence that Jones had threatened the children that afternoon.
Regardless, Osteen eventually argued she had acted in “self-defense.”
The two boys lost both of their parents that afternoon in a matter of minutes
After the incident, Osteen returned to Jones’ vehicle and was reportedly going through its contents when deputies began arriving.
Jones was bleeding heavily but remained conscious enough to identify her as the person who had attacked him.
Osteen raised her hands.
“I’m right here y’all,” she told deputies. “I done it in self-defense.”
Jones was rushed to a hospital, where he passed away from his injuries.
Six other children and two daycare employees had been inside during the incident. None suffered physical injuries, nor did Jones’ sons.
The emotional damage was another matter.
Konkel observed that the two boys had effectively lost both parents in a matter of minutes: their father was no longer alive and their mother was headed into the criminal justice system.
Within days, Russo saw the loss beginning to register even in children too young to understand homicide.
“It is very obvious that they keep looking out the window for Dad to come home,” she said.
Osteen faced capital punishment before accepting 100 years in prison
Osteen was initially held without bond on charges including premeditated first-degree homicide, two child-related counts, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and theft of the weapon.
In September 2025, a grand jury indicted her on 10 charges, setting up the possibility of a capital prosecution.
The trial never happened. On July 15, 2026, Osteen accepted a negotiated resolution in Bradford County court.
The first-degree homicide prosecution was reduced to second-degree homicide, and she entered pleas to that charge and several other felonies involving the firearm and the occupied vehicle.
Judge James M. Colaw imposed consecutive sentences totaling 100 years in prison and ordered Osteen to have no further contact with Jones’ family.
Jones’ great-aunt, Phyllis Sands, said relatives had originally wanted Osteen executed but ultimately accepted a sentence that would keep her imprisoned for the rest of her life.
“Personally, I was pushing for the d**th penalty,” Sands told the court. Her attention, however, repeatedly returned to the two children who had watched their mother attack their father.
“The boys were totally traumatized by it,” she said. “And I know one day those boys are going to want to look and see what happened.”
By then, another painful decision had already been made. With Jones gone, Osteen incarcerated and relatives unable to provide a permanent home, the two boys were adopted by a woman outside Jones’ family.
As of September 2026, Osteen is serving the century-long sentence imposed for the attack.
“Hope she rots in prison”, one comment reads
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