Four days before a Terre Haute police officer was killed in an exchange of gunfire with an armed suspect, officers in Greene County responded to an emergency situation where an armed man had threatened to shoot a woman as well as officers, and had said if police showed up, he was going out with guns blazing.

Officers from the Jasonville Police Department, Linton Police Department and Greene County Sheriff’s Department responded on Monday, April 30, safely extracted the woman and her neighbor from the area and successfully took the armed man, Kylan Holbert, into custody. Two weeks later, Holbert agreed to plead guilty to criminal confinement and is expected to be sentenced to 10 years.

Kylan A. Holbert, age 22, of Jasonville, was booked into the Greene County Jail at 1:58 a.m., Tuesday, May 1, by Greene County Sheriff’s Deputy David Elmore.

On Thursday, May 3, when Holbert appeared before Judge Erik Allen in Greene Circuit Court, he was charged with:

Criminal confinement while armed with a deadly weapon, Level 3 felony,
Intimidation where defendant draws or uses a deadly weapon, Level 5 felony,
Pointing a firearm at another person, a Level 6 felony, and
Domestic battery, a Class A misdemeanor.

Greene County Prosecutor Jarrod Holtsclaw represented the State and a public defender, Ellen Martin, was appointed to represent Holbert. The judge set his bond at $30,000 surety with ten percent cash allowed, and Holbert requested a speedy trial.

The judge scheduled one trial date in September and scheduled a possible early trial date in July.

Those dates have now been vacated since Holbert agreed to plead guilty and signed a negotiated plea agreement on Monday, May 14.

Holbert is scheduled to be sentenced in late June after the Greene County Probation Department completes a pre-sentence investigation report.

Holbert has agreed to plead guilty to the most serious charge against him, criminal confinement, a Level 3 felony.

Under the terms of the agreement, Holbert is expected to be sentenced to 10 years in the Indiana Department of Corrections with four of those years suspended. He will be recommended for the Purposeful Incarceration Program within the DOC. Under Indiana law, Holbert would be eligible for good time credit but must serve at least 75 percent of his time – a minimum of 4.5 years behind bars. Upon his release from DOC, he would serve the four suspended years on probation.

If accepted by the judge, the remaining counts will be dismissed.

Holbert has also been ordered to have no contact with the victim in this case.

When a couple of calls to 911 first came in, responding officers staged in the area of Hanna Field and Casey’s Convenience Store and Gas Station in Jasonville. From there they moved in to extract the victim and her neighbor from the area where Holbert was located on West State Road 48, Jasonville, before apprehending Holbert.

While they were dealing with Holbert, Deputy David Elmore interviewed the woman and her neighbor. Elmore detailed his interviews in the probable cause document filed in Holbert’s case.

The woman said an argument started when Holbert threw her cell phone then started to throw more things. Holbert told her she needed to leave but also said he was going to leave and demanded she find someone to come get him because if nobody did, the night was going to end badly for her. He then got his handgun, a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson SD 40 VE.

Deputy Elmore observed bruises on the woman’s upper arm and a bruise on an eye. She said Holbert had been hitting her earlier in the day.

With gun in hand, Holbert allegedly told the woman they were “going to play homicide, suicide, and see who dies first.” When asked if she took this threat seriously, she indicated yes and said he kept shooting the gun off and on but it wouldn’t fire all of the time. She told Elmore that Holbert kept pointing the firearm at her saying, “If I see any red and blue, there’s going to be six in you and the rest in them.”

The woman admitted to the officer that due to her stress during this situation, she had vomited all over herself due to nerves. She asked Holbert if she could go get a change of clothing or for him to get her a change, but he did not.

The woman said that Holbert had been drinking heavily, having consumed four or five beers and a bottle of Southern Comfort, and he might also have ingested pills and/or methamphetamine.

At one point while Holbert was armed, telling the woman she could not leave, he spoke on the phone with a family member who owned the home. He told this relative he was going to kill himself and the woman, and the woman’s brains were going to be all over the wall.

In a later interview, the relative told Deputy Elmore that she could hear Holbert clicking a gun and she told him he better not pull the trigger. She admitted she was crying during this conversation and was concerned for the woman’s safety – she said she could hear Holbert yelling at the woman and she could hear the woman in the background, and then she could not hear the woman anymore.

At the time of this conversation, the relative was at work in a hospital, and she was able to alert a co-worker to the situation and the co-worker immediately made one of the calls to 911.

Another call to 911 was made by a neighbor. The woman had managed to escape from the home and ran to the neighbor’s house. When she knocked on the neighbor’s front door, the neighbor opened her door and her home to the woman and told her to get inside, then turned off all the lights in her house. The neighbor said at first she didn’t notice that the woman had a gun in her hands.

The woman told Elmore when Holbert needed to go to the bathroom, he went to the back door where he thought he could keep an eye on the woman. He was stumbling on his way to the door, and he left the gun on the coffee table. She said when he started to “go,” she thought she could make it – she grabbed the gun and took off running. There were other guns in the house but she said she thought if she grabbed the gun, he would not have time to get another gun before she made it out.

The woman and the neighbor then moved into the neighbor’s garage where officers were able to get to them and evacuate them safely.

Officers on the scene who apprehended Holbert reported that multiple firearms were located inside Holbert’s residence.

Holbert did not post bond and as of May 16, was still incarcerated in the Greene County Jail.