Jan. 23 (UPI) — A New York man who shot and killed a 20-year-old woman in a friend’s car when they drove down his driveway in April 2023 was found guilty Tuesday of second-degree murder, reckless endangerment and tampering with physical evidence.
Kevin Monahan — of Hebron, N.Y., in Washington County, which borders the southwest part of Vermont — will officially be sentenced on March 1. The 66-year-old man faces a possibility of life in prison.
The jury deliberated less than three hours to decide Monahan’s guilt for the murder of Kaylin Gillis, according to Albany’s ABC affiliate WTEN.
Gillis and her friends pulled into Monahan’s driveway by mistake at night on April 15. The group — in two cars and a motorcycle — were trying to find a friend’s home.
Monahan testified in court that he first fired a warning shot from the deck of his house. But, he said, the reason he killed Gillis — in the passenger side of a car being driven by her boyfriend — was because he had allegedly tripped and the gun then fell to the deck, which in turn triggered the shot that killed Gillis.
A New York State Police forensic investigator refuted the defense’s contention that the gun was defective.
Testimony ended Friday in the trial, which ran for nearly two weeks. Washington County’s District Attorney J. Anthony Jordan said after the guilty verdict was handed down that his goal was to “seek justice for Kaylin.”
Jordan said that his office will be asking for the maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison for Monahan.
The 2023 shooting came when two other shootings — based on mistaken identities and misunderstandings — happened all within days of each other. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called the shootings “senseless” at the time on social media and said that the public cannot “become numb to these tragedies” while calling for an end to gun violence.
