‘I just shot at my mother’: Family of Laurel County woman speak out

LAUREL COUNTY, Ky. (FOX 56) — Bridgett Rich is filled with pain, sorrow, and anger as she thinks about what happened to her mother, Carol Rich, who was shot to death last Friday.

Bridgett’s younger sister, 26-year-old Brianna Rich, is accused of pulling the trigger. Bridgett said Brianna tried to kill their mother once before, several years ago, as she was sleeping.

“She tried to stab her and, my mom’s boyfriend at the time, jumped in front of her trying to save my mother, and he got stabbed,” Bridgett said.

Deputies said Carol Rich was shot several times and Brianna called a police dispatcher to report that she was the one who did it.

“I just shot at my mother,” Brianna calmly stated.

The night of the killing, Bridgett’s husband, Mathew Rees, was one of the first at the scene.

“Massacre, that’s what this was—a complete massacre,” Rees recalls.

He said he believed the killing was premeditated.

“Looking at all of the evidence, being there at the crime scene, and then coming the next day reviewing what had taken place,” Rees said. “From the inside of the shower, all the way to the kitchen, to the living room, and finally right here, where her body laid naked, the most cruel execution… and she ensured she was dead.”

Bridgett said the sister she knew as a child was kind, down to earth, and loved animals, just like their mother, but over the years, she turned to drugs. She said she does not know whether she was intoxicated that night, but also believes the killing was no accident.

“A week before all this happened, she tampered with the cameras, so nothing got recorded,” Bridgett said.

She believes her sister waited for the right opportunity to go through with what she wanted all along.

“Get on the ground! Get on the ground now,” a deputy can be heard shouting in the 911 audio call.

The sheriff’s department said they are still determining the cause.

“We will proceed with what we got; it will go to the grand jury next and if the grand jury indicts it, it will go through the court system,” Gilbert Acciardo, public affairs deputy for the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office, said.

Brianna is now behind bars after pleading not guilty.

Her sister and brother-in-law said they want her to regain the happy spirit she once had, but the only justice is, to keep her locked up.

“I am full of hate and I am angry at her, but my mom did love her, so I got to find that forgiveness, not for her, but for myself, because she’s dead; Brianna is dead to me, but my mom is alive; she was saved; she’s in heaven,” Bridgett said.