Kevin Monahan, 65, shot 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis after a car she was riding in with friends made a wrong turn on his property
A man was convicted of second-degree murder Tuesday for fatally shooting a young woman when the SUV she was riding in mistakenly drove up his rural driveway in upstate New York.
A jury found Kevin Monahan, 66, guilty of second-degree murder for shooting 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis on a Saturday night last April after she and her friends pulled into his long, curving driveway near the Vermont border while they were trying to find another house.
The group’s caravan of two cars and a motorcycle began leaving once they realized their mistake. Authorities said Monahan came out to his porch and fired twice from his shotgun, with the second shot hitting Gillis in the neck as she sat in the front passenger seat of an SUV driven by her boyfriend.
Good. What kind of a fucking psychopath sees a car of lost young people and decides, instead of offering directions or at worst leaving them the fuck alone, that they deserve assault with a deadly weapon?
Goddamn deranged.
A Trump voter.
Well that’s one less that can’t vote for him.
Which itself is kinda fucked up but that’s a separate issue.
Still don’t get how that doesn’t fall under taxation without representation
“No taxation without representation” is just a catchy slogan, not a legal principle. It has the same legal standing as “if the glove don’t fit you must acquit.”
taxation without representation
That’s a Declaration of Independence item, not US Constitution.
It was in reference to Britain passing the Stamp Act (and other things) charging fees on people living in what is today the United States to prop up the treasury of Britain.
Someone who has been conditioned by decades of fear propaganda, and taught that his guns are the only thing standing between him and the government/immigrants/criminals/whatever the fear of the day is
Years of “fear the other, they’re coming for you” Fox News.
An old, sweet lady was once talking to my wife about the blackout curtains in our bedroom. She says she bought some like it so “antifa couldn’t see inside” her house.
It makes me so angry that Fox News convinced her to be scared of a boogyman.
I think we need to be mindful that we can’t point at one media organization or “political aisle” for this type of rhetoric. @Microw@lemm.ee above encapsulates it beautifully.
Some areas simply have no-good groups of people like neonazis that will go into houses and try to take them over
The fear mongering isn’t subject to particular ideologies and anyone is susceptible. These tactics are being used by nearly(edit) everyone in the political realm.
edit: just gotta say I love the downvotes with no replies. There is a middle-ground nuanced objectivity where neither “both parties are the same” or “my political side is holier than thou” apply. Go touch some grass or learn how to have an actual conversation with those you disagree with online.
Nah.
Oh it’s worse than that, they were already leaving when he came out and shot them.
oh and this bullshit excuse:
He said he tripped over nails sticking up from the deck, lost his balance and the shotgun struck the deck. That, he said, accidentally caused his gun to fire at the Ford Explorer carrying Gillis.
The first shot was an accident. Obviously the second shot was to prove to them that the first one was an accident cuz if he were trying to shoot them, then he’d just shoot them. He probably tried shouting those words, but realized they were too far so he just had to show them what a great shot he was when he was trying by actually shooting one of them.
Totally innocent miscommunication.
or even just yelling at kids to get off his driveway
This is the nature of widespread gun ownership. Owning a gun turns every argument, every perceived wrong, every bruised ego into a potentially deadly situation. Buying a gun, “for protection,” is the dumbest fucking statement I’ve ever heard. Increasing the number of guns laying around ALWAYS creates a more dangerous environment.
The only thing about this I can somewhat understand is that it wasnt one car, it was two cars and a motorcycle. I would probably be a bit scared if such a big group of people suddenly show up to my rural house.
But 1. shooting them, and 2. while they were already driving away, is what makes this so deranged.
I hope rots the rest of his life away behind bars.
Such a miserable, worthless excuse for a human being to fucking execute someone for having the wrong directions.
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I’m an instacart driver and at least a few times a week I get the wrong driveway but then figure it out very quickly. This shit goes through my mind every single time.
That’s just the country I live in. I pulled into the wrong driveway and I instantly wonder idly if this is going to lead to my fucking death.
Okay, sure, but have you ever even considered uparmoring your car and mounting an automatic weapon to it? It’s like people never even played Car Wars. With some armor and a SAW they could have practiced their rights, and with a .50 they probably could have cut his house in half.
I mean, gas costs will go up with the additional weight and you need additional crew members to serve the weapons, but that’s the price of freedom.
Alternatively, you could try delivering the groceries by trebuchet from the back of a flatbed truck, but the automatic weapon thing is less likely to result in them cancelling the tip.
Steve Jackson games FTW. That mofo even predicted 9/11.
This could be a commercial for the cyber truck, the only bulletproof instacart approved delivery vehicle.
ok but where? I don’t think about this where I used to live in the US, but last summer we were in rural north carolina and I did a three point turn off someones driveway and I was not relaxed
It’s going to be an issue anywhere rural.
Execute the motherfucker to show these fucks the barrel points both ways. Set an example. Fucking lunatics.
If only those kids had had enough of their own guns, this tragedy could have been avoided. Somehow. I guess. That’s how it works, right? More guns?
Yeah, everyone knows you should just shoot up the front door every time you go to visit someone, just in case you went to the wrong house
America. Yay.
Who is radicalizing the elderly? Oh yeah, FOX News and the culture war bullshit
What is this? Real life BEEF?
I wrote a post on Nextdoor.com about this sort of situation. “Use of force” laws in my state, with a few easy-to-digest links and quotes.
Post basically said, “Your rights may not be what you think they are, and if you fuck up, you may find yourself in a concrete and steel box for life.”
Nothing combative, controversial, derogatory, political or non-factual. Shot down within 30-minutes for being “insulting”. Yeah. LOL, I even quoted Masad Ayoob, a world-class expert on the subject, and quite conservative if you read between the lines. Not good enough around here.
I’m a LiberalGunNut™ who studies these things. I have guns at the ready, in my home, and sometimes on my person. It behooves me to know the law.
Part of the reason I wrote that post:
A man had been seen on another man’s lot fucking about, trying to get in an empty trailer. A lot next door, not the shooter’s domicile.
Next night, the shooter setup a chair just inside the tree line and hunted. When the other man came back, he popped 5-rounds of 5.56 at him (AR-15). Hit him a time or two, guy lived.
Next day the cops question the shooter. He lies, gets his story mixed up, gets arrested for 2nd-degree attempted murder. Well, fucking obviously!
About 40% of the Nextdoor.com comments defended the shooter. To sum: The homeowner saw a man trying to break into an empty trailer, on the homeowner’s land, hid himself the next evening and decided to execute this man for trespass when he came back. Think on that. Death for breaking into an empty trailer.
I’ll tell you what my conceal-carry instructor told us, a very conservative gun nut. “If you pull your weapon, you’re shooting to kill. Whatever situation you’re trying to stop, be aware, think, is it worth 20-years, maybe life, behind bars? Because that may well be the outcome, not matter how justified you think you are in the moment.”
When people have the wrong idea in their head it’s so exhausting to change their mind. You need to treat them like delicate children. Like I believe you should debate respectfully and not be condescending, but most people are so sensitive you need to bend over backwards to bring up facts in a ridiculously delicate way. Meanwhile they’ll bring up absolute bullshit in the most rude and condescending way possible, often just leaving arguments out completely and just cussing you out. Discourse is completely broken.
I made a post, as a lawyer, about some of the common law rules for self defense, five months ago, and I still get replies from people who don’t like the truth:
Deadly force is never authorized to protect property.
An intruder standing in your living room with no weapon or other outward sign of aggression is not a deadly threat and you will be charged with murder if you kill him.
People cannot handle this.
I had quoted this in my post:
“In the anti-gun Spokane newspaper, internet comments indicated that many people had the clueless idea that Gerlach had shot the man – in the back – to stop the thief from stealing his car. One idiot wrote in defense of doing such, “That ‘inert property’ as you call it represents a significant part of a man’s life. Stealing it is the same as stealing a part of his life. Part of my life is far more important than all of a thief’s life.”
Analyze that statement. The world revolves around this speaker so much that a bit of his life spent earning an expensive object is worth “all of (another man’s) life.” Never forget that, in this country, human life is seen by the courts as having a higher value than what those courts call “mere property,” even if you’re shooting the most incorrigible lifelong thief to keep him from stealing the Hope Diamond. A principle of our law is also that the evil man has the same rights as a good man. Here we have yet another case of a person dangerously confusing “how he thinks things ought to be” with “how things actually are.”
As a rule of thumb, American law does not justify the use of deadly force to protect what the courts have called “mere property.” In the rare jurisdiction that does appear to allow this, ask yourself how the following words would resonate with a jury when uttered by plaintiff’s counsel in closing argument: “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant has admitted that he killed the deceased over property. How much difference is there in your hearts between the man who kills another to steal that man’s property, and one who kills another to maintain possession of his own? Either way, he ended a human life for mere property!”
― Massad Ayoob, Deadly Force - Understanding Your Right To Self Defense"
If he had just waited an extra few seconds he would’ve seen them back up and none of this would’ve happened.
Exactly. My dog just barks at people turning around in the driveway. They turn around; my dog thinks he won.
Your dog obviously needs a gun.
