Kaylin Gillis, 20, suffered a fatal fate when compared to Ralph Yarl, the 16-year-old, who miraculously saved his life after sustaining gunshot wounds to the head and arm after mistakenly ringing a house bell. .
Just two days after the Kansas City incident, Gillis and three friends were driving two cars and a motorcycle to look for other friends' residences in rural upstate New York, in the Hebron borough. When making a wrong turn, they got into the access road of a property and home. As soon as they saw their confusion, and without getting out of their vehicles, they began to turn around and rectify.
A shot rang out and, seconds later, a second detonation. Gillis was hit by a bullet.
In an area with poor phone coverage, the group drove to the neighboring city of Salem, almost on the Vermont border. Emergency teams rushed to perform CPR on the injured young woman, but failed to save her life.
Neighbors in the area where the shots occurred contacted 911 and reported the incident. To understand the error of the Gillis group, movement through that territory is difficult, as shown by the fact that the first police officers sent there also made a mistake and had to contact their 911 colleagues again.
The Washington County Sheriff, Jeffrey J. Murphy, explained at a press conference that the owner of the house, Kevin Monahan, 65, went out on the porch of his home and opened fire.
Upon arrival, Monahan refused to leave, although he was eventually arrested and taken to the county jail. They charged him with murder. "He assured that he felt threatened
"He assured that he felt threatened," the sheriff explained about what the detainee said. "He showed no remorse," Murphy insisted to reporters. "But there was no interrelation, not a word, nor did they ring the bell of any door," he stressed this Tuesday in an interview on CNN.
As the residents of the place told The New York Times on Tuesday, Monahan is a man who has a reputation for being rude, sour, prone to barking at the dogs in the neighborhood, scolding the parishioners of a local church or as reluctant to unannounced visits that on one occasion he used a chain to cordon off the more than 400 meters of access to his home. This time he opened fire and caused an absurd death.
Unlike Yarl, who is a black teenager, the Gillis case, who is white like Monahan, lacks racial overtones. But voices have been heard that have seen differences in the response due to skin color.
Monahan was quickly arrested and charged, while Andrew Lester, 84, spent a couple of hours in custody for shooting the Kansas City teen. And he got out without charges. It was not until this Monday, four days later and after the national consternation spread in the networks and in demonstrations in the streets of the city of Missouri, that the prosecution decided to charge Lester, who did not turn himself in to the police until this Tuesday. .
What both cases have in common is the nonsense that has been reached in the United States by armed violence, an epidemic more than demonstrated, although the armed part of the country looks the other way. A simple mistake, be it ringing a bell or taking a path, can end in tragedy.
"There was no threat, they had turned around," Sheriff Murphy insisted on the circumstances that led to the death of Gillis, a resident of Schuylerville, about 30 kilometers from where the event occurred. "She was just an innocent girl, who was going with friends to other friends' houses and who, unfortunately, drove down that driveway," he lamented.
The far and wild west is not a myth from the past, it is still present in the idiosyncrasy of many Americans. First you shoot and then you pray.
