A hunter’s bullet may have accidentally struck and killed a woman and star college athlete as she was driving on an Iowa highway in the middle of the night over the weekend.

Police said the bullet shattered the driver’s window of 25-year-old Micalla Rettinger’s car Sunday on Highway 218 in Waterloo, striking her in the neck and killing her.

The bullet also struck her boyfriend Adam Kimball, 32, in the face, wounding him, according to police and the Des Moines Register.

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A third person in the car was not hurt.

Micalla Rettinger, 25, was struck by a bullet and killed as she was driving on an Iowa highway early Sunday with her boyfriend and a third person. (University of Northern Iowa)

Investigators have ruled out road rage as the motive in Rettinger’s death.

“That was one of the first things we looked into, is to whether these people were involved in a dispute or something that had occurred earlier,” Waterloo Police Maj. Joe Leibold said, according to KWWL-TV.

“The passenger said there was nothing like that,” he said. “They simply left work and drove here. There wasn’t a lot of traffic. So there wasn’t they cut something off, nothing that occurred to the passenger in the vehicle. They simply left work and driving home, there was nothing unusual nothing that got their attention.”

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Because the shooting occurred around 2:30 a.m., one theory is the shooter could be a person who was hunting illegally, the station reported.

Police on Monday appealed to the public for help in “locating any person who may be involved in shooting or hunting (legal or illegal) in the area of the Cedar River between the Highway 218 Bridge and the Conger Ave Bridge.”

The appeal also included owners of trail/surveillance cameras.

It was also possible that the bullet could have come from someone randomly shooting a weapon, according to KWWL.

Rettinger graduated from the University of Northern Iowa where she was a member of the softball team, earning conference honors in her junior and senior year.

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"Sunday morning, we lost a member of the Panther family. We are devastated to learn of the senseless death of Micalla Rettinger," Director of Athletics David Harris said. "This news is heartbreaking to our softball team, UNI Athletics and the entire campus.”