Hospital room death pact: Wife shoots, kills terminally ill husband

On Saturday, January 21, at approximately 11:30 a.m., police officers in Daytona Beach, Florida, responded to the report of a person shot inside of Advent Health Hospital, located at 301 Medical Memorial Parkway in Daytona Beach. When police arrived on the scene, they learned that a woman had shot and killed her terminally ill husband.  Following the assisted suicide deathbed shooting, the wife barricaded herself in her dead husband’s eleventh floor hospital room.

Later in the day, after the shooting, police shared at a press conference that the 76-year-old wife, identified as Ellen Gilland, had made a pact with her husband Jerry Gilland to perform the death with dignity shooting three weeks prior, according to NBC News.

Officers evacuated staff and patients around the room, and at that time police said that they believed the woman did not present a threat to the hospital staff or patients. No one else was injured. Police began negotiating with her in an attempt to get her to leave the room peacefully and surrender to authorities. Police also asked the public to “to remain clear of the area.”

During police negotiations, authorities learned that the original plan was for the husband to shoot both himself, and his wife, who Daytona Beach Police Chief Young described as being “in a depressed state.” However, the wife took over after they realized he was too weak to do it himself. ~ NPR

At the press conference, Young stated that the wife later confessed that due to her husband’s impending demise, they had a conversation about three weeks back and made the decision to end Jerry’s life, “if he continued to take a turn for the worse.”  Jerry Gilland was 77-years-old at the time of the shooting, according to CNN.

“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,” he told reporters.

The wife eventually surrendered and was taken into custody just after 3 p.m.  Police said that Ellen Gilland would be transported to the Volusia County Jail in Daytona Beach where she’ll be looking at a first-degree murder charge. Chief Young said that incidents like this are unfortunately common, particularly during the holiday season. 

“It’s a tragic circumstance,” Young said. “It just shows that none of us are immune from the trials and tribulations of life.”

There are no winners in this story. For more on this tragic tale, see the video accompanying this article.

(Source and Ellen Gilland booking photo: Daytona Beach Police Department)

Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today   /   Follow Richard on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram