Coral Shores grad killed in murder-suicide in Riviera Beach

A Coral Shores High School grad, standout athlete and popular waitress at a busy Islamorada restaurant was shot to death by her boyfriend early Wednesday morning inside their Riviera Beach apartment in Palm Beach County in what police there call a murder-suicide.

Richard Bater-Timilty, 27, fatally shot Holly Given, 26, before turning the gun on himself, said Rose Anne Brown, public information officer for the Riviera Beach Police Department.

“He shot her, then he shot himself,” Brown said Wednesday night.

Neighbors in the couple’s apartment complex on the 1200 block of Surf Road on Singer Island, a barrier island in between the Intracoastal Waterway and the ocean, told police they heard a “pop” around midnight Wednesday, Brown said.

Police went to the apartment around 3:30 p.m. Wednesday afternoon to conduct a welfare check and found Given and Bater-Timilty dead inside, Brown said. She said police had never been called to the home in the past.

It’s not clear how long the couple was together. Given announced on her Facebook page that she was in a relationship with Timilty in October.

Given, who was raised in Key Largo, was a star athlete at Coral Shores High, from where she graduated in 2008. She particularly shined in softball as a pitcher, winning the program’s top honor, the Hurricane Award, four straight varsity seasons. She went on to play softball at Western Carolina University.

Timilty, who went by his middle name of Travis, was a charter fishing boat captain and a member of the West Palm Beach Fishing Club, according to an article in Marlin Magazine. He worked for Island Charters in West Palm Beach and captained the company’s Reel Captivity 62-foot Viking, which is active in the tournament fishing scene.

According to Palm Beach County court records, Timilty was married from Nov. 7, 2016, and divorced Nov. 17 of this year. He filed for divorce from his now-ex-wife on Oct. 20, 2017, according to the Palm Beach County clerk and comptroller. His ex-wife could not immediately be reached for comment.

News of Given’s death came as a shock to the many people who knew her in the Keys. Friends and former colleagues paid tribute to her on social media with such accolades as “a star from our community in every sense of the word. “Holly was always such a bright & shining star,” reads another post. “I’ll never forget her beaming smile and kind heart,” a former co-worker wrote.

John Bedell, owner of the City Hall Cafe & Grille, the popular mile marker 88.5 restaurant where Given worked on and off since she was in high school, called her “a light, a human light.”

“She loved everyone,” Bedell said. Even though she moved out of the Keys, Bedell said Given would pick up shifts at City Hall whenever she came back into town to visit family and friends, which was often.

“She always had a smile on her face.” Bedell said. “Nothing ever bothered her. If it did, she never showed it.”

This story was originally published December 21, 2017 at 2:02 PM with the headline "Coral Shores grad killed in murder-suicide in Riviera Beach."