A 76-year-old woman told authorities she killed her husband because that’s what he wanted her to do if he “continued to take a turn for the worse.”
The woman allegedly fatally shot her terminally ill husband at a Daytona Beach, Florida hospital after the two made a pact weeks before, NBC News reported.
On Saturday, officers were called to AdventHealth Daytona Beach for reports of a person shot. They say Ellen Gilland had barricaded herself inside her husband’s hospital room on the 11th floor.
They used a device to distract Gilland “to get her to put that gun down long enough for us to hit her with less lethal,” Daytona police chief Jakari Young said at a news conference.
She was arrested and now faces a charge of first-degree murder.
She claims that because of her husband’s health issues, they had a conversation three weeks prior and decided that if he “continued to take a turn for the worse, he wanted her to end this.”
“Initially, I think the plan was a murder-suicide, so she killed him, and then she was going to turn the gun on herself but decided she couldn’t go through with it,” Young told reporters.
Young added that the husband knew the shooting would take place that day.
Hospital staff and patients in surrounding rooms were evacuated during the incident, and no one else was injured.
“This was somewhat of a logistical nightmare which is why again, I’m very, very proud of my team,” Young added. “Pretty much all the patients on that floor are on ventilators so they didn’t have the room to evacuate that entire floor, so they evacuated the rooms where it was most important to get them out of the way,” adding that the incident was “tragic.”
“It just shows that none of us are immune from the trials and tribulations of life,” the chief said.
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