The only suspect in a murder investigation following the death of a Mendocino woman was arrested Wednesday in San Joaquin County, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office reported.
The San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office called the MCSO at 5:15 p.m. to report the suspect, 39-year-old Kelley Coan of Mendocino, was in custody.
Coan surrendered after consulting a private attorney, according to the MCSO, and was found with the dead woman’s station wagon which had been missing at the scene.
MCSO detectives were en route to San Joaquin County at 6:06 p.m. to interview Coan and make arrangements to tow the car back to Mendocino County, to be processed for evidence.
A caller at 8:36 a.m. on Tuesday reported shots being fired west of his house in the 42900 block of Caspar Little Lake Road in Mendocino. A deputy responded, searching the reported area and the main road, but did not find anything. The area is described as densely forested with houses scattered on large parcels throughout.
About two-and-a-half hours later, a medical aid call came from a house south of the first caller, requesting an ambulance for a woman who was down and injured, at 11:12 a.m. When medical personnel and deputies arrived, they found the woman dead, identified as 57-year-old Jamie Dawn Shipman of Mendocino. Evidence at the scene indicated homicide, the MCSO reported.
Shipman and her husband had lived on the property for several years, as did the suspect, identified as 39-year-old Kelley Coan of Mendocino, and her 20-year-old son, according to the MCSO. Investigators have learned Coan was upset with Shipman and her husband following a dispute related to the property they all lived on.
Coan was booked into the San Joaquin County Jail on suspicion of murder, held under a no-bail status.
