The Harris County sheriff described telling three young children their mother was dead as “heartbreaking.”
Nicole Karastury Elliot, 35, was shot in the head outside her Waverly Hall, Ga., home on Monday morning, Aug. 17, after returning from dropping her two sons, ages 10 and 6, at school, according to Harris County Sheriff Mike Jolley. Her boyfriend, Andrew Roy Harris, 36, who was out on bond for a previous domestic violence charge, confronted her at the home they had recently moved into together.
The couple’s Ring doorbell camera captured the final moments of Elliot’s life, including her pleas for mercy. “We heard voices on the Ring camera where she had yelled, ‘Don’t do it,'” Jolley told reporters Tuesday. “We heard the gunfire and then we heard her call his name out, ‘Don’t, don’t do it.'”
Harris fled the scene and was found the following day at a Day’s Inn in Phenix City, Ala., just across the state line. When officers moved in to arrest him, he shot himself in the head with the same weapon used to kill Elliot. Russell County Sheriff Heath Taylor said Harris had appeared to want to “make the deputies kill him by suicide by cop.” Harris was instead found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, still holding the gun.
The deadly confrontation had roots in an argument the night before. Jolley said Harris had tried to take the middle son’s medication, apparently intending to start abusing it. That dispute carried over into Monday morning when Elliot returned home after the school run. Her 14-year-old daughter had spent the night at her biological father’s house and was not present. None of the three children were fathered by Harris, who had been dating Elliot since 2024.
Harris had previously faced several domestic violence charges in both Georgia and Alabama, Taylor said. He was out on bond for a domestic incident when he killed Elliot.
Elliot’s social media painted a starkly different picture of the relationship in its earlier days. In May 2025, she posted a list of things she loved about Harris to mark their one-year anniversary, calling him her “future husband.” “Most of all I love doing life with you,” she wrote. “Cheers to our first year of memories together, and to many, many more.” Harris appeared throughout her posts, smiling alongside her and her children.
The sheriff personally delivered the devastating news to Elliot’s three children. “It’s never an easy thing to do, but when you tell three young kids that their mother is no longer here it’s heartbreaking,” Jolley said. He described the experience as “heart-wrenching.”
In the viral moment that brought national attention to the case, Elliot’s doorbell camera recorded her begging for her life before Harris shot her in the head outside their home. The footage captured her yelling “Don’t do it” and calling his name in desperation, followed by the sound of gunfire. The sheriff played the audio for reporters, describing the harrowing evidence his investigators had reviewed.
Harris’s death by suicide at the Alabama motel closed the possibility of criminal prosecution. Russell County Sheriff Taylor noted that Harris had sought to provoke officers into shooting him before ultimately taking his own life. The weapon recovered at the scene matched the one used in Elliot’s killing, authorities confirmed.