A man whose girlfriend was shot dead after they pulled into the wrong driveway in upstate New York said their “high hopes and plans” were shattered in a single, brutal moment.
“I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her,” Blake Walsh, 19, told NBC of his girlfriend, Kaylin Gillis. “My world was taken from me.”
An attorney for the man charged with murdering Gillis, 20, argued that Kevin Monahan, 65, didn’t mean to harm anyone when he fired a gun from his porch.
“When you have a victim and a tragedy, the thing everyone wants is a villain,” Kurt Mausert said of Monahan, who faces a second-degree murder charge.
“But not every time there’s a victim and a tragedy is there a villain. A number of errors were made that were unintentional.”
Gillis’s death came amid a spate of US shootings of people who accidentally approached a home or car by mistake.
The New York shooting came two days after 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot and injured in Kansas City, Missouri, by a man whose doorbell he rang after going to the wrong address to collect his siblings.
Three days after Gillis was killed, a man in Texas shot and wounded two cheerleaders, Payton Washington and Heather Roth, after one almost got into his parked car by mistake.
The cases have trained a global spotlight on US gun culture.
Walsh told NBC he met Gillis, who loved animals and wanted to work as a marine biologist, in high school. He said they dated for more than four years and often spoke of joining the reported 2% of high school sweethearts who go on to marry each other.
Gillis, Walsh and two friends mistakenly pulled into Monahan’s driveway in Hebron, about 50 miles (80km) north of Albany, while looking for an address where they planned to attend a party.
The group realized they were at the wrong house and were backing up to leave when Monahan fired two bullets in the direction of the car Walsh was driving and another vehicle following him, investigators said.
The local sheriff, Jeffrey Murphy, has said it was clear Gillis and her companions did not pose any threat.
One bullet struck Gillis in the neck. Walsh described driving away as fast as he could, going about 5 miles before the group could get a cellphone signal and call for emergency help. First responders pronounced Gillis dead.
“I want to believe it was instant,” Walsh told NBC, fighting tears, of his girlfriend’s death. “I’m hoping it was. I’m praying it was.”
Monahan was jailed and has pleaded not guilty. A judge on Wednesday denied his request to post bail.
If convicted, Monahan faces between 15 years and life in prison. His alleged actions have drawn widespread condemnation, including from the New York US senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
“I’m praying for Kaylin’s family and loved ones,” Gillibrand said on Twitter. “She shouldn’t have been shot and killed for turning into the wrong driveway. This senseless gun violence is killing our children and tearing apart families.”
Walsh told NBC he hoped Monahan receives the harshest punishment available.
“I didn’t want to be with anybody else,” Walsh said of Gillis. “I want the world to know how good of a person she really was and how much she [affected] everybody who had the fortunate opportunity to be in her life.”