FRANKLIN, Ind. (WISH) — A Johnson County jury on Wednesday found a 20-year-old man guilty of pointing a firearm at a woman and attempting to murder her husband while they unloaded a vehicle outside their home in summer 2022.

Nicholas Robert Saunders, who lives in Elizabethtown and was formerly from Morgantown, was found guilty of attempted murder and two felony counts of pointing a firearm in Johnson Superior Court 2, the Johnson County Prosecutor’s Office said in a news release issued Wednesday night.

“After the jury returned its verdict the defendant leapt up and fled the courtroom. He was quickly apprehended in the stairwell by quick thinking and quick moving sheriff’s deputies,” the release said.

Saunders was scheduled to be sentenced April 4, although he’s also facing another attempted murder charge in a Bloomington case. Saunders remained in the Johnson County jail on Wednesday night.

Police received a call Aug. 7, 2022, about a person shot at a home about 2 miles north of Morgantown and near the border of Johnson and Morgan counties. Officers arrived to find Jerry Jones with multiple gunshot wounds.

Amanda Jones told police she and her husband were unloading a vehicle while a dark blue vehicle drove by their home multiple times. The driver was honking and yelling. She told police, at one point, that Saunders got out of the vehicle, cursed, and said, “I got a gun.”

That’s when Amanda Jones heard gunshots and fell to the ground, suddenly realizing her husband had been was shot. Amanda was not reported to have been physically injured by the gunfire.

Saunders was in the vehicle with Miranda Lawson, from Edinburgh, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, court documents say. She’s charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery, pointing a firearm and false informing in Johnson Superior Court 3. A trial date for Lawson was scheduled for Aug. 20. She paid a $5,000 bond in August and was put on home detention.

Saunders also has been charged with attempted murder in a shooting that happened in July 2022 in Bloomington. Johnson County sheriff’s detectives learned of the Bloomington case when investigating the rural Morgantown shooting. In Monroe Circuit Court 9 in Bloomington, Saunders has been charged with attempted murder, aggravated battery, and battery with a deadly weapon.

Bloomington police were called to a report of shots fired about 1:15 a.m. July 11, 2022, in the 400 block of South Walnut Street. That’s an area with restaurants, offices, businesses and a private elementary school in downtown Bloomington.

Court documents say officers arrived to find a man who was shot and lying on the side of the road. The man told police he’d been walking when the people in a silver sedan called him a name. As the man approached the sedan, the driver raised and fired a silver handgun, shooting the man in the chest.

Snapchat messages from Saunders, in which he bragged he’d shot someone in the chest in Bloomington in July 2022, helped Johnson County investigators connect Saunders to the earlier shooting, court documents say.

In the news release about the jury’s Wednesday conviction, Johnson County Prosecutor Lance Hamner wrote, “I am very pleased with this verdict. It will doubtless result in a decades long prison sentence for Mr. Saunders sending a strong message to dangerous individuals that we will not tolerate vicious criminals in Johnson County.

“I’d like to thank our deputy prosecutors Matthew Kubacki and Bryan Smith for their hard work and effective advocacy in obtaining this verdict. I would also like to thank Detective Travis Wampler and the rest of our Johnson County Sheriff’s Office investigative team for their dedication and thorough investigation. This is how we keep our county safe.”