CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) − The jury trial for a woman charged with the 2022 shooting death of her retired Army husband began Monday afternoon.

On the night of Jan. 3, 2022, Clarksville Police conducted a welfare check in the 2200 block of Ladd Drive. Upon arrival, they found 38-year-old Sothon In dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Nearby, In’s wife, 32-year-old Theary Lim, and her two children were on the floor under a blanket.

Sothon In during his military service in the early 2000s. (Jared Donahue, contributed)

According to previous articles, video footage in the home captured the moments leading up to the incident and showed Lim pacing with a knife and gun in hands. Lim was later arrested and charged with her husband’s murder.

State gives opening argument, defense declines

According to Assistant District Attorney Crystal Morgan, when Sothon In got up to head to work at Shipley’s Donuts in the wee hours of Jan. 3, 2022, he didn’t know it would be the last day of his life.

When he got home later that morning at 9:35 a.m., his wife, Lim, greeted him at the door in a “very loving way,” Morgan told the jury. “She hugs him, they kiss … he doesn’t know that in three hours and four minutes, he will no longer be alive.”

ADA Crystal Morgan speaks to the jury during the trial for Theary Lim, April 28, 2025. (Jordan Renfro)

“He doesn’t know that when he lays down for a nap, the defendant (Lim) is going to retrieve a firearm and shoot him in the head as he sleeps in their bed,” Morgan said.

Morgan told the jury Sothon In was shot at 12:39 p.m., a moment captured on audio by a surveillance camera in the couple’s living room. Despite the shot going off at almost noon, 911 was never called. Nine hours later, a friend of the couple came to check on Sothon In after failing to get in touch with him and discovered his body.

“The defendant didn’t leave the house,” Morgan said. “She didn’t get the kids out of the house. She stayed there with her husband’s dead body in the other room for over nine hours. … (Lim) says this was an accident. This was no accident, ladies and gentlemen; it was premeditated murder.”

Lim’s attorney, Chase Smith, waived opening remarks.

The trial continues Tuesday morning.

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