Woman charged with murder in boyfriend’s death

A Wichita woman accused of fatally shooting her boyfriend while driving at Kellogg and Meridian earlier this month has been charged with second-degree intentional murder.

Wichita police responding to a shooting call at around 11:30 a.m. on Feb. 5 found Crystal K. Rotramel, 30, sitting on a curb on the eastbound Kellogg on-ramp and 40-year-old Richard J. Hamm Jr. dead in the passenger seat of the car they’d both been in. He had a gunshot wound to the left side of his neck.

It’s unclear what exactly prompted the shooting. But police have said the couple had been arguing leading up to it and described the atmosphere in the car as “very loud, very agitated.”

Rotramel told a person who stopped along the highway to help in what they thought was a traffic crash that “she had just shot her boyfriend in the head,” Lt. Jeff Gilmore has said.

Rotramel made her first appearance in Sedgwick County District Court on the murder charge Tuesday morning, according to court records. She is free on $100,000 bond. There was no defense attorney listed in her court file on Tuesday afternoon.

Rotramel could not be immediately reached by phone. She is next due in court on March 7, court records show.

This story was originally published February 21, 2017 at 4:19 PM with the headline "Woman charged with murder in boyfriend’s death."