Kraft will have to serve 85 percent, or three years and four months, of her sentence before she is eligible for parole.
HAMILTON — With tears in her eyes, Shelley Kraft reluctantly put her frail hands behind her back, allowing Mercer County Sheriff’s officers to close the handcuffs on her arthritic wrists.
They were taking her to prison, where she yesterday began serving a four-year sentence for the 2010 shooting death of a tenant who was living in her home.
Kraft, 62, admitted to killing 29-year-old Christopher Kimble on March 2, 2010. Police found Kimble on the bedroom floor of their Julia Avenue home with a bullet wound in his chest.
Kraft entered into a plea agreement with the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office in June. In court yesterday she said she agreed to the plea because she feared that a jury might not see that she is innocent.
“I thought about it for a long time,” Kraft said slowly. “I was satisfied that I felt that we didn’t really have enough evidence to convince a jury of my innocence.”
Kraft will have to serve 85 percent, or three years and four months, of her sentence before she is eligible for parole. After she is released she will be on parole for three years.
Kimble’s parents attended the hearing and spoke about the pain and loss they have felt since their son’s sudden death.
“When your child is murdered there is never closure,” his mother Sharon Kimble said. “Our hearts have been forever shattered and replaced with a deep pain that never goes away.”
Christopher Kimble, Sr. said it is a daily struggle to deal with the sadness of losing his son.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Kimble said. “I just got a knock at the door and three police officers who told me ‘Your son was shot.’”
Police were called to Kraft’s home just after 8:30 a.m. the day of the shooting after she called 911, telling dispatchers she had shot an intruder. Police investigated and learned that the man who Kraft said she was defending herself against was living there.
Kraft was initially charged with first-degree murder but pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless manslaughter as part of the plea agreement.
A few hours before the sentencing hearing yesterday, Kraft was arrested for driving under the influence of drugs.
She told the court she went to her brother’s house to drop off her cat so that he could care for it while she was in prison. Before driving back to a friend’s house where she was staying, she took two prescription pain medications, Valium and Percocet, for her arthritis. She had never previously taken them together, she said.
“I didn’t realize the effect,” Kraft said. “It surprised me when I realized that I started feeling very sleepy. I was weaving on the road.”
Judge Thomas Brown determined that Kraft was in a stable mental state and understood what was going on in the courtroom so that he could proceed with sentencing.
Kraft has long had a heroin addiction, prosecutors said. She has admitted to using heroin as recently as March 2012 and using as many as 10 bags of heroin a day at one point. She also said she used alcohol, marijuana and cocaine regularly.
Kraft is currently undergoing threatment with methadone in an effort to overcome her addiction and has been through two drug treatment programs, Brown said.
A former computer programmer for the state, she has one prior state court charge for drug possession which was dismissed after she completed a program for first-time offenders. She is retired and collecting a state pension.
Contact Jenna Pizzi at jpizzi@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5717.