A Sedgwick County judge gave Amunique Cavitt 165 months in prison after a jury convicted her of second-degree murder in the 2024 killing of Norman “Tray” Carter III.

WICHITA, Kan. — A Wichita woman was sentenced Feb. 13 to 13 years and nine months in prison after a jury found her guilty of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of her boyfriend, Norman “Tray” Carter III, on his birthday in April 2024.

The sentence closed a case that moved through Sedgwick County District Court for nearly two years and centered on a daytime fight that prosecutors said turned deadly on a residential street. Cavitt, 21, had originally been charged with first-degree murder. Jurors instead convicted her in December 2025 of the lesser count of second-degree intentional murder, with a domestic violence finding, leaving the court to decide the prison term and formal end of the case.

Police said the shooting happened shortly after noon on April 23, 2024, in the 1400 block of North Minnesota Avenue on Wichita’s north side. Officers were sent there at 12:11 p.m. after reports of gunfire and found Carter with multiple gunshot wounds to his upper body. Officers started life-saving measures before Sedgwick County EMS took him to a local hospital. He was pronounced dead at 1:01 p.m. Police identified him as 34-year-old Norman E. Carter III, a Wichita resident. Family and later court reporting said it was his birthday. By that afternoon, investigators had detained Cavitt and booked her into jail. She remained there after her arrest as the case moved forward on a $1 million bond.

Investigators said the confrontation started before the gunfire. Court records described Cavitt and Carter driving together in a Jeep when an argument broke out. Cavitt told police Carter slapped her, hit her several times in the head and tried to strangle her during the dispute. Officers noted scratches on her neck, according to the probable cause affidavit summarized in later reporting, though public accounts did not describe other visible injuries. Near the intersection of North Minnesota Avenue and East 13th Street North, Carter got out of the Jeep. A witness told investigators it looked as if Cavitt tried to hit him with the vehicle after he stepped away. Prosecutors said she then got out and fired multiple shots. Charging records said the gunfire continued after Carter fell to the ground. Police later recovered seven shell casings from the grass near where he collapsed.

The public record left some parts of the encounter unsettled even after the verdict. Local reports based on court filings described Cavitt’s account of being assaulted during the argument, while prosecutors pressed the witness account that she tried to run Carter over and then kept shooting after he was down. Those competing versions framed the case from the start. What is clear from police and court records is that the argument moved from inside the Jeep to the street, that Carter was shot multiple times, and that officers found Cavitt later the same day. The jury’s decision showed it did not convict her of the most serious charge, but it also rejected an outcome that would have cleared her in the killing. The domestic violence finding attached to the conviction placed the case within an intimate-partner setting rather than a dispute between strangers.

The case drew attention in Wichita not only because of the birthday detail but because of how quickly the violence unfolded in daylight on a neighborhood block. Police publicly announced the homicide investigation on April 24, 2024, a day after the shooting, saying a person of interest had already been detained. Carter’s obituary added a different picture of the man at the center of the case. It described him as talented, creative, passionate and smart, and said he was most of all a loving father to his daughter, Nakori. It said she was “the light in his eyes and the joy in his heart,” language that relatives and friends often use to explain the loss behind court proceedings that otherwise turn lives into charges, exhibits and sentencing ranges. That contrast between the formal court record and the family’s remembrance stayed with the case through conviction and sentencing.

Legally, the case shifted over time. Cavitt was first booked on a first-degree murder allegation after the shooting, a charge that can carry a much harsher sentence if prosecutors prove premeditation. By the time jurors got the case in December 2025, they were given the option to convict on first-degree murder or on the lesser second-degree count. They chose second-degree intentional murder. Sedgwick County District Judge Tyler Roush then sentenced Cavitt to 165 months, equal to 13 years and nine months, on Feb. 13, 2026. Public reporting indicated she was to serve that term in the Kansas prison system. No public summary released with the sentencing suggested any further hearing dates in the trial court beyond the normal post-sentencing process, though defendants in felony cases can still pursue appeals after judgment is entered.

Even in a case built around forensic details and courtroom procedure, the voices around Carter’s death remained personal. Police spokesman Andrew Ford said after the shooting that officers had arrived to a man badly wounded and began emergency care before medics took over. Prosecutors later described the verdict and sentence as accountability for a deadly domestic confrontation. Family memories, meanwhile, kept returning to Carter’s role outside the case file. In the obituary, loved ones wrote that he motivated other people and achieved what he set his mind to do. Those lines did not change the legal result, but they explained why the case carried weight beyond the courthouse. For Carter’s relatives, the story was not only about a defendant, a sentence and a charge reduced at trial. It was also about the sudden loss of a father on the day he should have been celebrating.

The case now stands at sentencing, with Cavitt convicted of second-degree murder and ordered to serve 165 months. The next milestone, if one comes, would likely be any appeal or post-conviction filing after the Feb. 13, 2026 judgment.