911 reveals details in December's Lenoir homicide

LENOIR, N.C. — A Lenoir school bus driver is expected to face a judge later this week, nearly a month after police arrested her for killing her daughter's boyfriend.

Nancy Austin's daughter said her mother had no choice but to use deadly force.

"There's been a shooting," she told 911 dispatchers the day of the homicide on Dec. 26.

Outside the home on Tara Place in Lenoir, deputies found Dylan Short dead from a gunshot wound to the head.

Nancy Austin, the grandmother of Short's baby boy, is accused of firing the fatal shot.

"He came in here threatening me and my mom, and she kept telling him to leave and he wouldn't," Sarah Austin, Nancy Austin's daughter, told dispatchers.

"OK," the dispatcher said.

"He kept coming at me," Sarah Austin said in the 911 call. "And he threw me on the ground."

"OK," the dispatcher said.

"And he hit my head and she shot him," Sarah Austin told dispatchers.

The shooting happened 15 months after Sarah Austin filed a restraining order against Short.

At that time, she claimed Short held a knife to her neck while she was pregnant with their son.

The court order was in effect for 10 days and then a judge dismissed it.

Sarah Austin is accused of assaulting Short right before he was shot and killed, according to a search warrant.

Joyce Triplett lives just down the street from where the murder happened and has known Nancy Austin all her life.

Up until the homicide, Nancy Austin worked as a bus driver at Lower Creek Elementary.

Triplett wants to know what led up to the shooting.

"I'd like to know what really happened, (why) she would do that," Triplett said. "I just didn't think she would have it in her to do anything like that."

A probable cause hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

WSOC