A 76-year-old woman accused of fatally shooting her husband at a Florida hospital is asking to be released from prison.
Ellen Gilland was originally charged with first-degree murder in January after police said she shot and killed Jerry Gilland, 77, as part of a suicide pact she had been working on for weeks.
However, she was unable to continue shooting herself after shooting her husband in his 11th-floor AdventHealth Daytona Beach hospital room, Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young said during an interview. a press conference after the January 21 incident.
Instead, Gilland engaged in a four-hour standoff with police officers. Eventually, they used a non-lethal explosive to distract and arrest her, Young said. Since then, she has been held in the Volusia County Jail since her arrest.
On Wednesday, Gilland was charged with misdemeanor assisted suicide/manslaughter and aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer.
Now his lawyers are asking for a bail hearing. “None of the charges against Gilland are capital crimes or crimes punishable by life in prison. Therefore, you are entitled to provisional release,” attorney Matthew Ferry wrote in a motion filed.
The motion cites a section of the Florida Constitution that provides that anyone charged with a felony is entitled to “subject to reasonable conditions” on bail, unless the offense is a capital offense or a felony punishable by life imprisonment. No bail hearing has been scheduled.
His next court appearance is a preliminary hearing on March 22.
The police chief said the couple had decided that if Jerry Gilland’s unidentified illness got worse, they “wanted it to be over with”. Young said her husband had apparently planned to kill himself “but he didn’t have the strength, so she had to.” That’s when they decided “on a murder-suicide,” the chief said.
In January, two hospital workers heard a gunshot in room 1106 and saw the accused sitting by her bedside with her unconscious husband lying in a pool of blood, according to a police report.
Patients were evacuated from adjoining rooms, which Young described as “a logistical nightmare” as most patients on the 11th floor were on ventilators. Officers lined the hallway with their guns trained on Gilland’s open bedroom door.
They repeatedly shouted, “Drop the gun!” according to an officer’s body camera video recorded about 10 minutes after the shooting. “Tell me what’s going on. We don’t want to hurt you,” an officer shouted.
Another said to a colleague: “Stand back. Back. We have the time. We only have time. After setting off the explosive, members of the SWAT team entered the room and attempted to use a stun gun, but were unable to subdue Ellen Gilland. She fired into the ceiling, then dropped the gun and was taken into custody, according to the police report.