Justin Bradshaw was headed for a job site on Dec. 16 in the small town of Lyman, Wyoming, when he got the last call he’d ever take from his 20-year-old daughter, Macey Dawn Bradshaw.
There was panic in her voice, because her ex-boyfriend was standing outside her apartment, and she feared the worst.
“She called at 11 o'clock and said, ‘Dad, he’s outside, and I need you to scare him away,’” said Bradshaw.
He pulled a U-turn and punched the gas.
He was there in less than four minutes, but it still wasn’t soon enough. The moment he reached for the handle to enter the apartment, gunshots sounded
“I reached down to open the door, and I heard the two gunshots go off … back-to-back. I actually heard his body fall to the floor,” he told Cowboy State Daily.
He charged in and found his daughter and her ex-boyfriend, James Hunter, prostrate on different sides of the room.
Each had bullet wounds in the head, and both were still alive.
He rushed to his daughter lying on the bed.
“She was still alert, still awake, and she asked me to help her," he recalled. "She said, ‘Dad, I’m gonna be sick. I’m gonna throw up. I need to get on the floor.’”
Bloodied hair clung to his palms when he reached for the phone to dial 911, exactly four minutes after she’d called him for help.
It’s the gruesome bookend in a long and troubled relationship that raises questions about the efficacy of social and institutional guardrails in the face of widespread intimate partner violence.
In pursuit of closure, the Bradshaws and others are mining the loss for insights in the hope that their story may help save others.
Their first insight is as clear as it is forbidding: When it comes to jilted love and poor mental health, even proactively cautious families can be caught off guard.
“About a month ago, Macey said to me, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if James killed me, and then killed himself,’” said Macey’s closest sister, Taylor Bradshaw. “I never thought it would actually happen.”
This is the story of how a loving relationship turned deadly.
How It Began
It all began with curious glances in the back seat of their parents' cars, as Bradshaw and Hunter first met while sharing a carpool to Urie Elementary School in the Bridger Valley of southwest Wyoming.
Bradshaw, congenial and outgoing, took an interest in Hunter’s subtle humor and quirky sensibilities.
“He had this sense of humor where he’d tell a joke so straight-faced you weren’t even sure if you should laugh at it or not,” said Taylor Bradshaw, 22, Macey’s closest sibling who’d known Hunter most of her life.
Hunter, introverted but observant, cherished her attention and was eager to return it in full. They bonded over a love of art, passing pencil sketches and handwritten notes.
When they began dating in high school, he spoiled her with affection.
“He bought her flowers, planned these special dates. He was always doing random acts of kindness,” said Taylor. “I actually have a text saved between me and Macey that said, ‘Someone must be paying James, because no guy ever treats anyone this nice.’”
But teenage love morphed into unhealthy co-dependency.
Dark Manipulation
Hunter graduated from high school two years ahead of Bradshaw, and in the middle of her junior year, she left home to live with him and his parents. Then she started skipping school before dropping out entirely.
“That’s when it started going downhill," Taylor said. "They spent all their time at home together. He wasn’t going out with his friends anymore. Both of their mental health got really bad.
“They turned towards drinking. I think that was her out, and it was something they did a lot together.”
Bradshaw confided in her sister that the relationship was making Macey unhappy. Yet she felt trapped on a crucifix of her own compassion, as Hunter resorted to dark manipulations, said Taylor.
Each time she broached the topic of separation, he threatened self-harm.
“She knew she needed to leave him for a long time, but she kept telling me, ‘I care for him so much and I don't want him to do anything to himself,’” Taylor said.
Days after Macey's 18th birthday, they had a decisive argument in which Hunter admitted his threats of self-harm were insincere.
That was all she needed to hear.
A contingency plan was in place to move near her mother in southern Utah, where her parents first met in college.
“After that, I'm not even kidding you, the very next day, we moved her," Taylor said. "We loaded up our cars, and I took her down to St. George."
But the relationship with James did not end there.
‘Big Change From How He Used To Be’
The separation was a needed reprieve, but Macey continued to struggle mentally and never found the social support she needed in southern Utah.
Though she was nervous about what could happen with Hunter, after two years away she decided that returning home was her best chance at a happy life.
She was right, and yet the decision proved deadly wrong.
In June 2025, she returned to Lyman, took a job as a waitress and got into her own apartment. For the first time in many years, Macey Bradshaw was proud, happy, and looking forward to her future, her father said.
“Macey was so proud to have her own place. She decorated it all cute. She had a job, she had a car. She felt like she finally gained independence in her world,” said Justin Bradshaw.
Tacitly, she rekindled with Hunter, thinking they might now be capable of a healthy relationship.
It was a fatal misjudgment, because by that time his mental health had taken a turn for the worse, said Taylor.
“I could tell how bad he was struggling because he wouldn't see or talk to any of us," Taylor said, adding that his physical appearance had also changed. "If they came to my house, Macey would come inside and he'd sit out in the car. If they were on the phone and James knew she was around someone else, he wouldn't talk at all. It was a big change from how he used to be."
From tall, lean and clean-cut, to unkempt and unhealthily thin.
“It pretty much looked like skin and bone to me,” she said.
Blood Painting
Once again, Macey found herself tangled up by Hunter’s threats of self-harm and other forms of aggression, said Chaynee Martin, a close friend and one of the few to witness his manic tactics firsthand.
Hunter forced Bradshaw to sign “soul contracts” and scared her with threatening art, said Martin.
“He gave her a blood painting. It was this demonic drawing and he cut himself and used his blood to finish it,” Martin said, explaining that Macey viewed these drawings as symbolic threats.
He also monitored Macey's phone.
In September, they had a date to spend the night in the nearby city of Evanston. Shortly after they arrived, Martin received a scary text from Bradshaw.
“She sent me a message that said, 'He has a gun. This isn't normal. I don't feel safe. I just have to tell somebody. I'm deleting this message,'” Martin said. “She told me not to tell a single person about it.”
Martin alerted a police officer, and then she drove to Evanston and waited in the parking lot of Macey's hotel.
‘Just Wouldn’t Let Go’
Hunter’s intimidations reached new extremes after Macey began dating another man in October.
Macey told Martin his car was often seen prowling her new boyfriend’s neighborhood, where she stayed on occasion.
Investigators would later discover binoculars and other suspicious implements in Hunter’s car, according to the family, corroborating after-the-fact Macey's fear that she was being stalked, putting her among the 9% of women who’ve been stalked by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
“She’d call me having a panic attack, because he would not stop texting her, he wouldn't stop blowing up her phone, he wouldn't stop coming around. James just wouldn’t let go,” said Justin Bradshaw.
Martin also witnessed this behavior.
“James would text and say, ‘Macey, I don't know if you're busy, but if you have the time, I'd appreciate a response,'" she said. "Then he’d send that same text about 100 times in a row while calling 90 times in between. It scared her."
‘I Need To Know If He's Coming To My House To Kill Me’
Macey's therapist and family members prompted her to block Hunter’s phone, but she believed that would put her at a greater risk.
“At one point, she told me she didn't want to block him because, she said, ‘I need to know if he's coming to my house to kill me,’” said Taylor Bradshaw.
Her sister concedes that while she worried he may be dangerous, she still couldn’t believe that James Hunter — the quirky, introverted boy from elementary carpool, and the doting high school boyfriend — would ever be capable of murder.
One night in October, Hunter “laid hands on her,” said Martin, which simultaneously terrified Macey as well as gave her resolve. The following day, she asked Martin for help crafting a message meant to end all communication with Hunter indefinitely.
Less than five minutes after they sent the text, Hunter was at her door.
“I slammed the door shut and I locked it," Martin said. "He banged on the door. Macey was hiding in the corner and we had Taylor on FaceTime. He banged on the door again, and I told him, ‘Macey said she's done. You have to respect that.'"
Hunter for a few minutes stood silently outside. Then he knocked again, saying he’d come to pick up a hoodie. Martin prepared to hand over the item through the door.
“We were terrified. I was so afraid of a gun on the other side of that door,” she said.
She worked up the courage to pass the hoody through a crack in the door, and once he left, the girls rushed to her sister’s apartment to spend the night.
“I've never seen somebody have a panic attack that bad, her body was in such a state of trauma and flight she was wetting the bed. It was heartbreaking,” Martin said about the impact on Macey.
A Little Bit Of Peace
Bradshaw lived in a historic studio space made of rough-cut timber on one of Lyman’s main thoroughfares, and its outdated features put her at risk that day, said Taylor Bradshaw.
Shortly before 11 a.m. on Dec 17, 2025, Hunter parked around the corner from her apartment, then approached on foot.
Her sister believes he entered by popping out a window frame in the front door and reaching through to unbolt the lock from the inside.
Had Macey not called her father right then, her final hours may have been much worse, Justin Bradshaw said.
First responders found duct tape and zip ties on Hunter’s person, according to the family.
“I think James had malicious intent beyond just taking her life," Justin Bradshaw said. "But the timing was so quick — I was there within minutes of when he broke into her house — he didn't have time to do anything else.
"At times that kid was happy and had a good heart and had nothing but genuine love and intent for Macey. But that was not the person I saw that day. The evilness of the world … got him.”
Justin Bradshaw takes comfort to know Macey felt protected by him in those last moments; her clothing had come loose, and the last thing she ever asked from him was to cover her up.
“She had a visible look of pain and agony on her face, but she was still there with me, and she talked to me. I think she found a little bit of peace knowing that I was there to help her,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion.
Hunter and Macey were taken to Evanston Regional Hospital; they were pronounced dead the following day at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City.
For the Bradshaws, closure comes from turning tragedy into purpose.
The family has established a nonprofit organization called A New Dawn, which is fundraising and organizing mental health resource for young women and others.
Macey Dawn Bradshaw’s celebration of life ceremony is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday in Lyman. The ceremony can be streamed on the Honoring Macey Bradshaw Facebook page.
Contact Zakary Sonntag at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com
Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.
