Left inset: Monique Aldridge (KTVU/YouTube). Right inset: Vaughn Boatner (Hayward Police Department). Background: The California home where Monique Aldridge was killed by Vaughn Boatner after he slid under her partially open garage door and shot her (KRON/YouTube).
In a tragic incident at a California home, a 5-year-old boy witnessed the horrific moment his pregnant mother was shot by her ex-boyfriend—his father—while he was watching “A Minecraft Movie.” The assailant, having slipped under a partly open garage door, attacked the child’s mother. Amid the chaos, the boy asked the woman’s current boyfriend, who was present during the shooting, “Is my mom okay?”
According to court testimony from the preliminary hearing, the boyfriend replied, “I need you to come in here with me,” as reported by the East Bay Times. This testimony was part of the proceedings against Vaughn Boatner, the ex-boyfriend, and father of the child.
This week, 36-year-old Boatner received a 35-year prison sentence after entering a no contest plea to charges of voluntary manslaughter and attempted murder. This plea was part of a deal with the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, in which more severe charges of murder and child abuse were dropped.
Following the shooting, Boatner fled to Seattle, Washington, where he was eventually apprehended in May 2023, according to a police press release. The violent episode occurred on May 11, 2023, at Aldridge’s home in Hayward, California, just after she discovered she was expecting a child with her boyfriend.
During the attack, Aldridge suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head, while her boyfriend sustained serious injuries to his face, losing several teeth and part of his jaw. Fortunately, Aldridge’s young son, who was also in the house, was found unharmed by the officers who responded to the scene, as noted in the police statement.
“During the investigation it was … learned that the 5-year-old boy at the scene was Aldridge’s and Boatner’s child,” the release explains. “It is believed that Aldridge and the second victim were in a dating relationship and lived together during the incident.”
Aldridge’s boyfriend testified at Boatner’s 2023 preliminary hearing that Boatner snuck into the couple’s home and attacked Aldridge in their garage while her son was watching the “Minecraft” movie in an adjacent room, East Bay Times reports.
Aldridge and the boyfriend had gotten into an argument on May 8 after he failed to hold a door open for her at a restaurant, just two days after Aldridge found out she was pregnant. The 30-year-old told her boyfriend that she wanted to take some time to herself. Boatner found out about it and confronted Aldridge at a local park after asking her to meet.
Prosecutors said Boatner was concerned about his son’s safety and was arguing with Aldridge at the park. She had the boy with her and “fishtailed” out of the parking lot without placing him in a car seat, which further worried Boatner, according to his aunt, who was with him at the time.
That same day, May 11, Boatner drove to the couple’s home with his aunt and entered the garage to kill Aldridge and shoot her boyfriend. The aunt allegedly stayed outside.
After hearing Aldridge being shot, the boyfriend locked her son in a closet. “I took him in the room so I can make sure he was safe,” the boyfriend testified, according to East Bay Times.
“The first thing he asked me about was his mom,” the boyfriend recounted.
Boatner was sentenced on March 19 and is awaiting transfer to a state prison.
“This is a senseless thing that happened,” Aldridge’s uncle, Lorenzo Smith, told local Fox affiliate KTVU in May 2023 after the shooting.
“We’re going to have a sit down with him, explain the circumstances and provide some counseling,” Smith said about Aldridge’s son. “It’s going to be a long, hard road for us, naturally.”
