A Key West jury deliberated for less than an hour before finding a 35-year-old Big Coppitt woman guilty of second-degree murder for the June 2023 shooting death of her boyfriend, Tyler Nulisch.
Brittany Holbrook, now 35, will be sentenced on April 11 by Judge Mark Wilson. Florida law imposes a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years for second-degree murder convictions in which a firearm was used.
Holbrook shot her boyfriend, Nulisch, in the back in the early morning hours of June 17, 2023 following an argument.
The Keys Weekly spoke with one of the jurors in Holbrook’s trial, who said testimony showed the night of the shooting had included alcohol and cocaine.
The couple shared the rented home with a roommate, Jordan Kinn, who called 911 after Nulisch was shot, telling dispatchers that his roommate, “‘is in bad shape. He’s hurt real bad and there is a lot of blood,’” according to the arrest affidavit provided to the Keys Weekly by the Monroe County State Attorney’s Office in 2023.
When paramedics and deputies arrived within five minutes, Nulisch was unconscious, but breathing. He was taken to Lower Keys Medical Center, where he died an hour later.
Kinn, the roommate, who had been sleeping in his bedroom at the time of the shooting, told investigators his roommates had been arguing, and he was later awakened by Holbrook’s scream.
When Kinn went to the living room to investigate, Nulisch was lying on the floor bleeding and was in and out of consciousness. When the roommate asked the victim what had happened, Nulisch reportedly said, “The bitch shot me in the back,” according to the arrest affidavit.
Kinn told detectives Holbrook hadn’t responded when the victim said she had shot him in the back.
Kinn, the roommate, was neither charged nor arrested.
He told detectives the three roommates had been drinking alcoholic beverages after work on the patio under their stilted house. All three eventually went to bed. Then the roommate woke up when he heard Holbrook screaming in the living room.
Holbrook’s defense attorneys argued that Holbrook suffered from battered woman’s syndrome following abuse by her father, prior boyfriends and at least four times at the hands of Nulisch. But prosecutors told the jury that Holbrook never called the police or filed any complaints of abuse against Nulisch throughout the nine or so months they were together.
The juror, who asked not to be identified, told the Keys Weekly that the jury was shown graphic crime scene and autopsy photos that showed Nulisch’s bullet wound to the lower back as well as bruising around his neck and scratches on his body, even though Holbrook’s defense team claimed that Holbrook was the one choked by Nulisch against a wall.
No marks of any kind were observed around Holbrook’s throat the night of the shooting. “No petechiae were observed in either of her eyes,” according to the arrest affidavit.
(Petechiae are small, flat red dots that represent burst capillaries, according to medical forensics. In strangulation cases, they are above the point of constriction and are a result of the obstruction of the jugular veins.)
The jury did not believe that Holbrook had been abused by Nulisch, and took “45 minutes, if that,” to find her guilty of second-degree murder.
Holbrook, who had owned a paddleboard rental and tour company at a local hotel, will be sentenced on April 11 by Wilson.
