Micalla Rettinger: Iowa woman, 25, shot while driving home from work

A 25-year-old woman was shot and killed while driving home from the bar where she worked in Cedar Falls, Iowa early Sunday morning.

Micalla Rettinger was driving her boyfriend, Adam Kimball, and one other person around 2:30 a.m. when a gunshot shattered the driver’s side window, hitting Rettinger in the neck and then continuing on to strike her boyfriend in the passenger’s seat.

Rettinger was able to pull the car over but died on the scene. Her boyfriend was taken to University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics for his injuries but has since been released, a hospital spokesman told The Gazette on Tuesday.

Authorities also told The Gazette that there’s nothing to suggest that Rettinger or her boyfriend were targeted.

Maj. Joe Leibold of the Waterloo Police Department told ABC News they are looking into the possibility that an illegal hunter fired the fatal shot.

“It’s a state park out that way. … There’s islands out that way. We’ve been made aware that some illegal hunting may have been taking place on a couple of those locations,” Leibold said.

Leibold told ABC they are looking for surveillance footage of trail cameras that might show if anyone was hunting in the area at the time.

According to local ABC affiliate KCRG, investigators are also analyzing the bullet sample that was removed from Kimball’s body to determine what kind of gun it was fired from, and from what distance.

Meanwhile, Rettinger’s father, Dr. Steven Rettinger, is imploring anyone with information on his daughter’s shooting to come forward.

“Anybody that knows anything about someone in that vicinity who might’ve been shooting a gun off at 2:30 in the morning, that would be helpful information,” Rettinger said, according to CBS 2 Iowa.

Rettinger graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in 2016, where she earned a degree in biology and played on the softball team, according to The Gazette. Her father said she hoped to become a dentist.

The UNI softball team held a moment of silence in honor of Rettinger before their game Tuesday night.

The Cedar Valley Crime Stoppers are offering a reward of $14,000 for information on the shooting. Waterloo Police are asking anyone with information on Rettinger’s shooting to call them at 319-291-4340 or Crime Stoppers at 855-300-TIPS.