Before Ashley Kendall ever got into her car Tuesday night, she asked her lawyer to walk her outside. 

Attorney Sharon Mitchell watched the 22-year-old climb into her dark green Jeep Wagoneer in the parking lot of her Coos Bay office. Mitchell even decided to follow her down the road in her own vehicle just to be sure Kendall was safe. She didn’t notice through the Jeep’s tinted windows that her client’s estranged husband, Travis Kendall, was lurking in the backseat.

Once on the road, Kendall called her sister in Coquille, during their cell phone conversation she realized he was in the car. The call disconnected.

Mitchell kept following the Jeep as it turned from Commercial Avenue north onto 10th Street down to Koos Bay Boulevard.

She saw it come to an abrupt stop — as Kendall tried to scramble out, her husband shot her in the back, a Coos County DA press release said.

“We believe Ashley was still the driver when the car stopped,” District Attorney R. Paul Frasier said in a press release that disclosed new details in the sequence of events. “We also believe that she decided she had to get out of the car.”

The bullet went in the upper left part of her back and through her chest. Mitchell saw Kendall fall to the ground and gave her first aid until medics arrived. The Wagoneer had driven away.

Travis Kendall jumped in the driver’s seat, and sped off toward his grandparents’ Myrtle Point home, leading police on a high-speed chase. Coquille Police Chief Mark Dannels said the vehicle topped 100 mph before turning onto Sitkum Lane.

The day before the attack, Kendall had borrowed a white Dodge Shadow from a friend in Coquille, and parked his pickup truck in a parking lot at 10th Street and Collier. Kendall said he needed the car because he didn’t have dependable transportation to go from Myrtle Point to Coos Bay for visits with his wife and 5-month-old son during visits supervised by state child welfare workers, the press release said.

On Tuesday night, Kendall drove the Dodge to the attorney’s office, and parked a block away. Frasier isn’t sure how he knew Ashley Kendall would be there.

She was meeting with Mitchell to discuss an upcoming hearing pertaining to the state’s custody of the couple’s son, and about filing for divorce, Frasier said. Mitchell can’t release what they talked about because it is confidential.

A lawyer in the same office defended Travis Kendall on previous charges.

Investigators are reviewing toxicology tests of Kendall’s body fluids to determine if he was using drugs or alcohol at the time of the attack. Frasier said it will probably take up to eight weeks to get the results.

An autopsy done Wednesday night, confirmed Travis Kendall died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Frasier, who has been here more than 20 years, only remembers one other incident in Coos County of a husband killing his wife and then himself. The circumstances, however, were drastically different. The older woman was terminally ill with cancer. Frasier said spouses have killed each other before, but not in this premeditated way.

“This is the first time I’ve seen the person actually waiting to accomplish the act,” Frasier said.