Law&Crime Sidebar - Wife Shoots Husband in Murder-Suicide Pact at Florida Hospital — The Story so Far

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

A Florida woman is accused of shooting her terminally ill husband at a Daytona Beach hospital on January 21. Authorities said Ellen and Jerry Gilland had a murder-suicide agreement in place if his health declined past a certain point. The 76-year-old woman is now in custody facing a possible first-degree murder charge. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber and former SWAT member Chad Ayers break it down. LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Drop the gun. Drop the gun right now. Drop the gun. Drop the gun. A woman allegedly shoots her terminally ill husband to death in the hospital. We break down what we know so far in the case with former SWAT member, Chad Ayers. A scary situation unfolded at a Florida hospital where police were in an armed standoff with a 76-year-old woman. Daytona Beach Police Department responded to a shooting at Advent Health Daytona Beach.

Ellen Gilland allegedly shot and killed her 77-year-old terminally ill husband, Jerry Gilland. You see, authorities have indicated that this was a planned murder suicide pact, but the couple in the event that the woman's husband's condition deteriorated. And after a wild encounter with police, Ellen Gillen was arrested and officially charged for first-degree murder and aggravated assault. Now, euthanasia or mercy killings like this, they're illegal. They're illegal in most states and they're illegal in Florida.

There's some physician-assisted suicide that's allowed in some states. And we'll get into Canada in a minute. So just because Jerry Gillen consented to this, it doesn't really matter. I do want to talk a little bit more about how this situation unfolded and what we know right now of the story. So I want to bring in Chad Ayers, former sheriff's deputy for Greenville County and South Carolina and former member of the SWAT team where he served as an assistant team leader. Chad, good to see you again. Thanks so much for coming here on Sidebar. It's great to be back, Jesse.

I want to go through some of the footage with you first. So let's play it and we'll talk about it on the other side. Drop the gun. Drop the gun. Drop the gun. You got any eyes that old start? What's that? You got any eyes?

I can't see. She's sitting right behind the bed. Yeah, she's on the other side of bed. This black revolt is going to visit her. Drop the gun. Drop the gun. Drop the gun! Just drop it.

Just put it on the ground and slide it away from you. Drop the gun! I got you. You can't open from the outside. Hey, here. You want to practice open with this? Do you open it from the outside? Drop the gun.

Watch out, watch out, watch out, watch out. We got time. Back up. Back up. We got time. We got nothing but time, guys. Can we evacuate some patients from the joining rooms? Can we do that or not? Drop the gun, I got a good angle right here. Drop the gun. Man, hold on. You got to build dialogue. Tell me what's going on. Tell me what's we don't. I don't want to hurt you. We don't want to hurt you. Tell me what's going on. Okay, so what stands out to you about the police response there? Honestly, I feel like they did an excellent job. As you could hear, They had a shield up for some protection, some coverage for them. Also, the loud verbal commands they're giving. And they're trying to relate, hey, talk to me.

Let us help you put the gun down, really doing their best to de-escalate that situation and not force this lady's hand to do any more damage than she's already done. I thought it was really interesting that the officer who was the body cam footage of, he told another officer, don't dialogue with her. And then he jumped in and said, what's going on? Tell me what's going on. is that because you want one voice exactly and that's a perfect example a lot of times in these heightened situations everyone's amped up and everyone's trying to say things it's almost like a

felony car stop that we do and everyone's get on the ground lay down hands up hands behind your back and the suspect is trying to figure out well who am i listening to do you want me to lay down do you want me on my knees do you want my hands up down where do you want them so if if that officer can establish some type of rapport and have one person initially begin talking to that person it helps everything kind of calm down a little bit and bring that situation hopefully to an end a little bit sooner. What I think complicated it too was the fact that this was in a hospital, very, very sensitive environment. And even you kind of heard some of the officers saying, are we able to clear the patients from the rooms? Walk me through that environment, the difficulty of this situation there.

Well, from the article and reports that I've been given, this wasn't just a floor for people who had some broken bones or minor surgeries. you're on a floor, you know, where people are basically on their last leg or their deathbed almost. On ventilators, things like that, that have to be operated and plugged in for them to keep preservation of life. So that's got to be very, very difficult of trying to evacuate that area. I think they did the best they could in that situation because we do. We want to, they have this lady contained to a room. They've started verbal commands, but you never know what could happen. If this lady all of a sudden bolts out of this room, hopefully the situation,

can be controlled very quickly, but we have to plan for the worse. And so evacuating everyone off that is very important. But I cannot imagine how difficult that would have had to be. At the time of this recording, we still don't know how she was able to get a gun into a hospital. Do you understand that? I mean, is there difficult? I'm trying to remember if there's some sort of security checkpoint. Does there need to be a security checkpoint? How does one get a firearm into a hospital? In Greenwood, South Carolina, our hospital has in the emergency room, metal detectors. In reading that, I think it said that they did have some metal detectors, but not all of them are armed or manned by people. There are areas of our hospitals and most

hospitals where you can just walk in to go see someone without going through that. Look, Jesse, we've seen an increase in active shooter events last year. Active shooter events in these types of situations were up 53%. And though this is not, this was an isolated incident, I think we have to start looking at physical security and how we are going to protect those people inside. So yes, I'm a big proponent of having armed guards and metal detectors because just having them there and no one being there is it does no good. And we are seeing an increase in these types of situations, shootings in medical and hospital facilities.

You know, we had one in Oklahoma last year where a guy was upset with a doctor, went in there and killed several people. So I think it is. It's time we started evaluating our physical security. Yeah, I agree with you because I think the hospital also had a little bit of an issue in terms of being prepared for something like this, you know, a panic situation and kind of what the reporting on it was, they were confused as to what to do, right? A lot of organizations take a reactive approach. In light of many events over the last few days, my company that, you know,

we teach active shooter response gets an influx of calls. We need this training now. We need to get this training now. It's almost like your seatbelt. You put your seatbelt on, not hoping to get in a car wreck. You put your seatbelt on to be prepared in case. And so I think it's important that we started evaluating. are we providing valuable effective training or are we just checking a box on this type of situation? I want to talk a little bit more about the motive behind this. So police investigated it and they found that this was a murder suicide pack. Now, we know that it is illegal for her to do what she did. Even if Jerry Gillen said, I want you to shoot me and then I want you to kill yourself, that's not legal. Now, Canada's interesting, but Canada has actually legalized euthanasia in 2016.

I think now they're deciding whether or not to extend it to people who are not just terminally ill, but the mentally ill. In your experience, have you dealt with these kinds of situations because they're really quite tragic? And I'm curious your thoughts on it. The first ever suicide that I ever had to go to was a terminally ill cancer patient. And his wife had gone to the grocery store, came back, and he committed suicide with a handgun in his bed and had written a long note out, but just said, I can't handle the pain of this

treatment anymore. And then there was another situation. Same thing. Murder suicide. Terminally ill cancer patient took his wife's life and then took his life again. What's interesting in the article is that initially the decedent in this case down in Florida had planned to take his own life first or take his wife's life and then take his own life. But he was too weak to do that. So he had his wife to it. Just a very sad situation. All of us here across the country, family members or friends who have battled a terminal illness like cancer. And the pain that they go through is horrendous. But it is, it's a very sad situation. Obviously, I'm not in that situation. But to go to that extent, it breaks my heart. It's a sad story, Jesse. Real quick, do you think that she should be charged here? Do you think

she should be charged with murder? I mean, maybe the aggravated assault, but from a policy standpoint, do you think she should be charged with murder? I think if you look at the textbook definition of it, she fits within that category, at least allegedly does. But from a policy point of view in your experience, do you think that she should be charged? Well, what's interesting, I think, is if we look at the premeditated part, right, the premeditated part from what I am reading is that he planned to take her life and then his. So was the pre-planning, it wasn't the pre-planning of her to take his life than hers. And so I think it's going to be a stretch to get a murder conviction.

I think that to put 12 people in a box and to convict her, that's going to be a difficulty. I see this thing being pled down to some other type of charge. You might be right. The only thing I'll say is under the law, premeditation can form like that, right? It can form in an instance. It doesn't have to be something that happens over the weeks or months or days. It could happen really in that instance if you are deliberate and you deliberate on that choice.

Who knows what that conversation was between her and her husband, if there was a conversation making that choice could be enough for the murder charge. I want to bring one last thing before I let you go. I understand that one of the ways that officers were able to, resolve the situation is they used a flash bang. I believe the SWAT team uses it. It distracted her. It makes a loud noise and then they're able to ultimately subdue the suspect. Walk me through what that's like. Flash bang is noise, flash distraction device. An NFDD is what we would call it. It's basically a loud firework basically for civilian terms, I guess. And it emits a very bright light. And so it looks

almost like what people would think, oh, that looks like our grenade. There's no type of fragmentation in that. It's just a loud bang and a loud burst of light. That's used to gain the element of surprise. And so when I roll that in there, you got a second or two for that thing to deploy. And when it does, the concussion of that, the flash of light and the loud bang really disoriented the person in the room. And it gives law enforcement the opportunity to gain that element of surprise and hopes that maybe either it startled her enough to drop the gun, which I think when they deployed It startled her to where she discharged the firearm. But it gives us the element of surprise to get in there

and hopefully resolve this situation and gain control of her quickly. You're right. Reports indicate that she actually fired a shot into the ceiling. And then I think she was ultimately taken into custody. Chad Ayers, thanks so much for coming on talking about this really sad story. And I'll say complicated story, too. Really appreciate you taking the time. Jesse, thank you.

And that's all we have for you here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.