Lovelorn astronaut won't face murder charge
By Barbara Liston 1 hour, 46 minutes ago
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Astronaut Lisa Nowak, who stunned colleagues by driving from Houston to Orlando in a diaper to confront a woman she thought was a love rival, was charged with attempted kidnapping but not with attempted murder on Friday, prosecutors said.
The former space shuttle crew member also was formally charged on Friday with battery and using a weapon to attempt a car break-in. She is accused of pepper spraying the girlfriend of fellow astronaut Bill Oefelien, the prosecutors in Orlando said in a news release.
Shortly after Nowak was arrested on February 6, police said she was trying to kill U.S. Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman. The police then charged Nowak, 43, with attempted first-degree murder, which carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
But the murder accusation was dropped without explanation when prosecutors brought the formal charges almost a month later. The prosecutors declined to comment.
In February, Nowak's lawyer, Donald Lykkebak furiously accused police of adding the attempted murder charge at the last minute in order to delay Nowak's release on bail. Orlando Police Sgt. Barbara Jones denied that police tried to manipulate the system.
"The charges we brought forward, we believed the elements were there," Jones said. "We do the probable cause and they (prosecutors) have to decide the formal charges and what can they prove beyond a reasonable doubt and these are the charges."
Nowak, who has three children and recently separated from her husband, was freed on bail and allowed to return to her home in Houston. She was ordered to stay away from the Florida county where Shipman lives and was fitted with a global positioning device so authorities can track her movements.
Police said Nowak, a flight engineer who made her first trip into space in July to the
International Space Station aboard shuttle Discovery, sped the 950 miles from Houston to Orlando wearing diapers so she would not have to stop at a bathroom.
She disguised herself in a dark wig, glasses and trench coat to confront Shipman at Orlando International Airport but told police she "only wanted to scare" the woman into talking to her.
Nowak waited for Shipman's flight from Houston to arrive and then followed her to the parking garage armed with pepper spray, a steel mallet and a pellet gun, police said.
She also carried black gloves, a folding knife, rubber tubing and trash bags, they said.
Nowak tried to get into Shipman's car and sprayed the pepper spray through the window when Shipman refused to open the door, police said. Shipman alleged afterward in a court document that Nowak had been stalking her for nearly two months.
NASA placed Nowak on a 30-day leave of absence, which ends next week.
"There's no speculation beyond that," said James Hartsfield, a spokesman at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Nowak, who grew up in Rockville, Maryland, and attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, became an astronaut in 1996 and waited 10 years for her first space flight.