A Missouri man ambushed a 23-year-old Amazon driver with a pellet rifle and dragged her into a ditch to die, and a judge just gave him 40 years

A Missouri man who shot an Amazon delivery driver he had never met, then pulled her from her truck and left her in a ditch, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison. Thomas Coy, 65, received the sentence in the death of 23-year-old Jasmine Taylor, according to Law&Crime, which cited court records.

Coy pleaded guilty in September to one count each of second-degree murder and armed criminal action. The shooting took place on Feb. 5, 2025, on Lawrence County Road 2152, about 40 miles west of Springfield. That afternoon, an Amazon truck was seen crashing into a fence around 4 p.m., according to a probable cause statement from the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office.

Taylor was behind the wheel of the crashed truck. In video Amazon provided to investigators, she can be seen slumped over in the driver’s seat as the truck rolls up to a driveway. When investigators questioned Coy, he confessed and added several details about what happened that day, according to the sheriff’s office.

Investigators say Coy waited for the Amazon driver to come back down the road

“We have determined that, in fact, Mr. Coy saw the Amazon driver going down the road,” Chris Berry of the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office said. “He then retreated back to his home, got his weapon, came back up and waited for the Amazon driver to come back by. And then that’s when he shot them,” Chris Berry said.

After the shooting, Coy pulled Taylor out of the truck, dragged her along the road and left her in a ditch while she was still breathing. She had been shot in the head with a pellet rifle. However, authorities did not realize at first that she had been shot, as the call initially came in as a traffic crash.

Taylor was taken to Mercy Hospital Joplin, where doctors found the projectile in her head hours later and alerted law enforcement. She died on Feb. 9, 2025. Coy was charged the next day, as the case was upgraded from an assault charge to first-degree murder. He later pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of second-degree murder.

Berry said at the time that the case was hard to make sense of. “It’s just really sad because there is no sense to what occurred whatsoever,” Chris Berry said. He added that it was emotional because of how senseless the killing was, and that he could not understand why someone would be angry enough to do something like this.

Investigators hinted that they had a motive but did not share it publicly. Neighbors told a local radio station that Coy had often complained about the speed of delivery vehicles on the county road. Delivery drivers have faced violence on the job in other cases as well, including one where an Uber Eats driver was allegedly shot by a customer’s boyfriend.

Berry also stressed that Coy and Taylor were strangers. “They did not know each other at all,” Chris Berry said, describing how Coy saw the driver pass by, went home for the rifle and waited for her to return. Taylor’s family had asked the court to deny Coy bond after he was charged. However, the case never went to trial, as Coy’s guilty plea in September settled it.

At 65, Coy’s 40-year sentence means he is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison for the killing of the young Amazon driver.