By SONJA ISGER AND KIMBERLY MILLER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Updated: 5:58 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010
Posted: 3:18 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010
The boyfriend of a 33-year-old woman told a detctive she accidentally shot herself with a gun she held in her left hand, according to a sheriff's report.
The tragic tale made investigators pause. Family members said she was right-handed.
Claudia Moreno died Saturday at 10:45 p.m. at Delray Medical Center from a single gunshot to the left side of her torso. Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office detectives arrested her longtime boyfriend, Angel A. Montalvan-Oliva, 27, on charges of manslaughter and discharging a firearm in a home, arrest reports show.
Several emergency 911 calls alerted sheriff's dispatchers to trouble about 4:05 p.m. Saturday at a home near Greenacres. Callers reported a woman had been shot and needed paramedics at the 4700 block of Melaleuca Lane. Later witnesses said they were driving the woman to the hospital.
Moreno, whose home address is listed on Gulfstream Road in Lake Worth, was taken to JFK Medical Center and was later transported to Delray Medical Center where she died.
Deputies met up with two women and two men, including Montalvan-Oliva, at JFK Medical Center.
Montalvan-Oliva told investigators that he found the gun where he was playing soccer in a Wellington park two months ago.
While interviewed at sheriff's headquarters, he also told them he bought .32 caliber ammunition for the gun at Wal-Mart earlier that afternoon. He had been cleaning it in the bedroom of the home before the shooting happened, he said.
He first told deputies he was out of the room when Moreno picked up the gun and accidentally shot herself.
But a witness told investigators a different story: After a gunshot blast, Montalvan-Oliva ran from the home screaming, "I accidentally shot a round off and I shot Lila, I think I killed her," according to the arrest report. Montalvan-Oliva, crying, called 911 on his cell phone, the witness said.
Montalvan-Oliva changed his story to say he was in the bedroom when the shot was fired but insisted Moreno picked up the firearm with her left hand and the gun went off, a sheriff's detective wrote.
"Moreno's family told me Claudia was right-handed," the arrest report said.
Friends at the home this evening did not want to comment.
Staff writers Charles Elmore and John Lantigua contributed to this story.
sonja_isger@pbpost.com
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