LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WHAS11) -- Louisville Metro Police are investigating after a woman was shot and killed outside a church in the Shawnee neighborhood Sunday afternoon in what police believe to be a murder-attempted suicide.
LMPD said its officers found a woman dead in the street shot multiple times outside the North Central Church of Christ at the intersection of 35th and Main Streets. According to LMPD, while officers were at the scene, they heard gunfire and found a man they suspected to be the shooter with a gunshot wound. At this time, police believe the man shot himself. Police said the man was taken to University Hospital.
"I am just in total shock," Velma Stanton, who was visiting her cousin in the neighborhood, said. "I mean now people just don't care where it is. They're just going to get you. If you can't go to church and be safe, then it's pretty bad."
"I'm just totally in shock," Robyn Bellamy, a family friend of the woman, said. "She's just coming out of the church and for somebody to run up on you and have the intent in their mind to want to kill you."
Police have not identified the woman at this time, but one of the woman's cousins told WHAS11 her family is still trying to process what happened Sunday afternoon.
"Some things you can't deal with," she said. "Some things you have to leave it in God's hands and you have to let God take control of it."
According to the woman's cousin, the woman and the man knew each other. She said there were warning signs in their relationship.
"It was something going on in their relationship that only them two would know and only God would know," she said.
But regardless of the reason behind the violence, the murder has left a family and community devastated.
"She was a beautiful person, beautiful soul, never bothered anyone, helped anybody in need," her cousin said.
"It's like a family member to me," Bellamy said. "Just having fun on Friday evening, we're all celebrating me opening a business, and to get a phone call to this? I'm lost."
►Contact reporter Dennis Ting at dting@whas11.com. Follow him on Twitter (@DennisJTing) and Facebook.