Derek Pixley now remains headed toward trial on a murder charge after the court refused a proposed reckless-homicide agreement.

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. — A Clark County judge has rejected a plea agreement that would have resolved the murder case against Derek Pixley with a reckless-homicide conviction and a six-year prison sentence, keeping intact a murder prosecution over the 2022 shooting death of Brittney Boman.

Clark Circuit Court Judge Nicholas Karaffa rejected the agreement in July after hearing from Boman’s mother, Shawnee Goodman, who urged the court not to approve it. The proposed deal would have reduced the murder charge against Pixley to reckless homicide. News reports from the hearing said the agreement called for six years in prison, with credit for time already served. Karaffa said the proposal fell outside the range the court considered reasonable. The ruling returned the case to the trial track, with the most recently reported trial date set for Nov. 30.

The decision marked a major turn in a case that began nearly four years earlier on Brownstown Road near Henryville. On the night of Oct. 2, 2022, Clark County authorities responded after a 911 call reporting that a woman had been shot. Deputies found Boman suffering from a gunshot wound in a wooded area. She was taken to a Louisville hospital and survived for almost three months before dying Dec. 30, 2022. Investigators later treated her death as a homicide. Pixley, who was Boman’s boyfriend at the time of the shooting, was not charged with her killing until May 2025.

Boman was able to speak with investigators while hospitalized, but available records and family accounts make an important distinction about what she could tell them. She did not identify the person who shot her. Court records described in local reports say she told police that she had gone into the woods to hide from Pixley because she considered him unpredictable when angry. She also told investigators that Pixley was there when she regained consciousness after the shooting. Family spokesperson Shawn Bostock separately said Boman remembered a bright light, a gunshot and pain before drifting in and out of consciousness. Those accounts do not establish that she saw the shooter.

The investigation initially remained with the Clark County Sheriff’s Department. Pixley was arrested on the night of the shooting on an allegation that he had violated a protective order Boman had filed against him, according to local reporting. Later reports citing court documents said Boman had an active protective order against Pixley when she was shot, although a WLKY report in May 2025 said a prosecutor had previously described its status at the time of the shooting as unclear. Pixley was not charged with murder during the initial investigation, and the case eventually went cold.

Indiana State Police took over the homicide investigation in December 2024, assigning it to the agency’s Cold Case Unit. Police said investigators conducted numerous interviews before presenting the case to the Clark County prosecutor. One witness interviewed during the renewed investigation, Ryan Heath, told authorities that Pixley had come to his home the day before the shooting and made a threat against Boman, according to court documents described by WAVE. Heath also alleged that Pixley returned on the day of the shooting with a gun, asked whether Boman was at the house and later drove toward the area where the shooting occurred. Heath said he then heard a gunshot and heard Pixley’s vehicle speed away. Those allegations have not been tested at trial.

Other evidence described in court filings centers on Pixley’s actions immediately after Boman was wounded. WLKY and WAVE reported that he went to a nearby home and told a resident that somebody had shot his girlfriend and to get a gun. According to those reports, the resident called 911 and handed the phone to Pixley. Investigators alleged that Pixley then walked directly to the area where Boman was found. The prosecution has cited witness statements as part of its case, while Pixley’s court-appointed lawyer challenged the evidence at his first appearance in 2025, arguing that the probable-cause affidavit did not identify a recovered murder weapon or physical evidence tying Pixley to the shooting.

Clark County Prosecutor Jeremy Mull said after Pixley’s 2025 arrest that investigators had accumulated evidence through the renewed inquiry until prosecutors believed there was enough to move forward. Pixley was arrested May 12, 2025, in Scott County and charged with one count of murder. At his first court appearance, Karaffa ordered him held without bond. His attorney disputed the strength of the state’s evidence, while prosecutors maintained that the collected witness accounts supported the murder charge. A charge is an accusation, and Pixley has not been convicted of killing Boman.

The proposed plea agreement surfaced after the case had already been moving toward a jury trial. WAVE reported in June 2026 that court records reflected a plea deadline while Pixley remained charged with murder and held without bond. By July, prosecutors and the defense had reached an agreement under which the murder case would instead end with a reckless-homicide plea. The proposed sentence became the central issue when the agreement reached Karaffa. Goodman told the judge she opposed the deal and argued that accepting it would not serve people affected by domestic violence. The judge then declined to approve the agreement, stating that its terms were not within a range he considered reasonable.

The rejection did not amount to a finding that Pixley is guilty of murder, nor did it determine that the prosecution’s account of the 2022 shooting is correct. Instead, it prevented the negotiated resolution from taking effect. The state therefore continues to bear the burden of proving the murder charge if the case reaches a jury. The defense can challenge witness credibility, the meaning of Boman’s statements, the absence or presence of physical evidence and other elements of the prosecution’s case. Reporting from Pixley’s first appearance showed that his attorney had already attacked the probable-cause allegations and argued they did not demonstrate sufficient proof.

For Boman’s family, the July ruling came after years of uncertainty. She was 29 when she died and had spent nearly three months hospitalized after the shooting. Her family continued pressing for answers after her death, and relatives attended Pixley’s court proceedings after his arrest. Goodman told the court during the plea hearing that she did not want the case resolved under the proposed terms. Family members embraced after Karaffa rejected the agreement, according to local television reports. Bostock said the family wanted Boman’s story to be heard through the court process.

The case also carries unresolved factual questions that are likely to matter if it proceeds to trial. Publicly reported records say Boman could not identify the shooter, even though she told investigators she had been hiding from Pixley and found him nearby after she was wounded. Prosecutors have pointed to later witness statements concerning alleged threats and Pixley’s movements shortly before the shooting. His defense has questioned the lack of physical evidence described in the charging affidavit. No publicly reported trial testimony has yet resolved those competing accounts, and the reason prosecutors originally agreed to the reduced charge and six-year sentence has not been publicly explained in the reports reviewed for this article.

Pixley has been charged with murder and, according to the most recent reliable reports reviewed, remains held without bond and subject to a no-contact order involving Boman’s family. His trial is scheduled for Nov. 30. Unless another agreement is reached and approved or the schedule changes, jurors would be asked to decide whether prosecutors can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pixley committed Boman’s killing.

Author note: Last updated Aug. 21, 2026.