Kevin Monahan, 65, appeared in court on Wednesday, four days after he allegedly fired twice at an SUV that mistakenly turned into the driveway of his home. Kaylin Gillis, 20, was killed.
FORT EDWARD, N.Y. — The homeowner accused of fatally shooting a 20-year-old woman when an SUV she was in turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York will remain in jail, a judge ruled Wednesday.
Kevin Monahan, 65, appeared in Washington County Court, four days after he allegedly fired at a Ford Explorer from his porch when a group of four friends realized they’d pulled into the wrong driveway and were leaving the home in Hebron, roughly 50 miles north of Albany, Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey Murphy told reporters Monday.
One of the two shots hit Kaylin Gillis, an aspiring marine biologist who was pronounced dead several miles away after the group called 911.
Monahan was arrested on a charge of second-degree murder. He was arraigned on Sunday afternoon, where he pleaded not guilty.
Monahan’s attorney, Kurt Mausert, asked Judge Adam Michelini for low bail for his client, saying the purpose of bail is to ensure the defendant’s participation in the criminal proceedings and not to impose undue hardship.
However, Michelini ordered that Monahan be remanded without bail. The decision prompted cheers from supporters, including Blake Walsh, Gillis’ boyfriend.
Wednesday’s hearing, however, did not shed light on why the suspect allegedly opened fire on the SUV, but a neighbor told The Associated Press that Monahan had become more and more upset in recent years at people making wrong turns into his driveway.
In an exclusive interview with Us.Mistertruth on Tuesday night, Walsh said that he and three passengers — two friends and his girlfriend — had been looking for a party when two rounds were fired in their direction.
We thought we were at the right address,” he said. “We didn’t have any cell service to figure it out. As soon as we figured it out that we were at the wrong location, we started to leave, and that’s when everything happened.”
Walsh, 19, of Cambridge, New York, said what occurred next was a blur.
My friend said, ‘They’re shooting — go!’ I tried to step on the gas as fast as I could, and that’s when the fatal shot came through,” he said.
While Mausert has declined to discuss details of the shooting, he told Us.Mistertruth before Wednesday’s hearing that “there were mistakes made by the drivers of the vehicles, mistakes made by my client. I can not elaborate on that more until I conduct my own investigation, which I’m in the process of doing. And until I receive discoverable material from the district attorney’s office.”
He said that Monahan had no ill intent and that the human tendency is to villainize someone when there is a tragedy.
“If the situation involves error rather than ill intent, then there really is no villain,” Mausert said. “I believe this is a case that was sort of the perfect storm of errors and confluence of events that resulted in a tragedy without necessarily there being malefic intent.”