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Friends of Kaylin Gillis, woman shot after turning into wrong driveway, testify in murder trial: “People were screaming”
The boyfriend of a 20-year-old woman fatally shot in the neck when they pulled into the wrong driveway last year described to a jury Thursday hearing a shot pierce the car and then seeing his girlfriend slumped over in the passenger seat.
“Frantic in the car … people were screaming,” Blake Walsh said, describing the moments leading up to when Kaylin Gillis was shot.
Walsh and a group of his friends testified in the second-degree murder trial of Kevin Monahan, 66, who is charged with fatally shooting Gillis. Many fought back tears as they spoke, according to CBS affiliate WRGB. On a Saturday night last April, the couple and their group of friends drove into the wrong driveway in Hebron, some 40 miles north of Albany, near the Vermont border.
The group’s caravan of two cars and a motorcycle turned around once they realized their mistake. But authorities allege Monahan came out on his porch and fired two shots from a shotgun, striking Gillis with the second shot.
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Gillis’ death drew attention far beyond the rural town in upstate New York. The killing happened just days after the shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarl in Kansas City. Yarl, who is Black, was wounded by an 84-year-old white man after he went to the wrong door while trying to pick up his brother.
Monahan’s defense attorney, Arthur Frost, has said Monahan was scared by the group of strangers arriving late at night at the remote home he shared with his wife. Frost told the jury last week the shooting was a “terrible accident” involving a defective gun that went off when he stumbled and banged it into something.
Monahan also is charged with reckless endangerment and tampering with physical evidence.
“We start to panic and she’s not being responsive”
Walsh, 20, and a handful of his friends testified that they were headed to a party at another house in the area and mistakenly turned into Monahan’s long, snaking driveway. The house had no lights on when they pulled up. Walsh said that they were in the driveway for “about a minute” before hearing a loud noise, according to WRGB.
“We were trying to figure out where we are,” said Jacob Haynes, who was in the back seat. “We knew we were not at the right house.”
The house lights turned on about the time the two vehicles made a three-point turn to leave. Walsh said he heard a loud noise as he was backing up and one of his two friends in the back seat of the SUV said someone was shooting a gun. That’s when the panic started.
Alexandra Whiting, who also was in the back seat, said she saw through the rear window a man holding a gun on the porch. She said that she could “see the silhouette” of the weapon, and said that the gun was parallel, facing them, as the second shot rang out, WRGB reported.
Walsh said he heard a sound like metal breaking in the car upon the second shot. He said he ducked as he drove away. Walsh said those in the car were “frantic” and “screaming,” and when he “asked in the car if everyone was okay,” he realized that Gillis was “slumped over the door side of the vehicle” and not responding, according to WRGB.
“We start to panic and she’s not being responsive,” Haynes said. “We tell her to wake up. We couldn’t call 911 because there was no service. We noticed Kaylin. She’s bleeding from the left side of her neck. I put my hand to cover the wound.”
The friends saw by phone flashlight that Gillis was wounded. During his testimony, Walsh choked up as recalled pulling up next to the Jeep driven by his friend Katherine Rondeau to tell her about Gillis.
“He said ‘Kaylin’s been shot. We need to get to a hospital,'” said Maxwell Barney, who was also in the Jeep.
Gillis’ friends called for help once they found a cellphone signal several miles away. Meanwhile, Haynes kept his hand on Gillis’ neck wound to stop the bleeding. A dispatcher guided the friends through CPR while they waited for help to arrive. But emergency workers were unable to save her.
Frost, who argues Monahan felt threatened, focused on how the two vehicles were briefly stopped next to each other on the driveway during cross examinations. He also established that most of the friends did not notice the private property sign by the driveway.
Some of the friends had consumed alcohol or marijuana earlier that evening, according to testimony.
Rondeau told the jury that she was leading the group of friends to what she thought was the house of a friend hosting the party.
“I thought I knew where I was going,” Rondeau said, beginning to cry.
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Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Moscow — The head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, Lt. General Igor Kirillov, was killed along with his deputy early Tuesday in an explosion in Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.
An explosive device hidden in an electronic scooter went off outside a residential building as the two men left the structure, Agence France-Presse cites investigators as saying.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. “Investigative and search activities are being carried out to establish all the circumstances around this crime.”
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
The committee carries out responsible major investigations in Russia.
Kirillov was sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court on Dec. 16 for the use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine during Russia’s military operation in Ukraine that started in Feb. 2022.
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Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, said it had recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons on the battlefield since February 2022, particularly K-1 combat grenades.
During the almost 3-year operation, Russia has made small but steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls.
Kirillov had been in his post since 2017, AFP notes.
A powerful earthquake hit the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu Tuesday, smashing buildings in the capital, Port Vila, including one housing the embassies of the U.S. and other nations. A witness told Agence France-Presse of bodies seen in the city.
Dan McGarry, a journalist with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project based in Vanuatu, told the Reuters news agency in an interview that police said at least one person had been killed and injured people had been taken to hospital.
“It was the most violent earthquake I’ve experienced in my 21 years living in Vanuatu and in the Pacific Islands. I’ve seen a lot of large earthquakes, never one like this,” he said.
The 7.3-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 35 miles, off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The ground floor of a building housing the U.S, French and other embassies had been crushed under higher floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.
“That no longer exists. It is just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but they have dropped,” Thompson said.
“If there was anyone in there at the time, then they’re gone.”
Thompson said the ground floor housed the U.S. embassy, but that couldn’t be immediately confirmed.
A photo showed significant damage to the building:
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The United States has closed the embassy until further notice, citing “considerable damage” to the mission, the U.S. embassy in Papua New Guinea said in a message on social media. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this earthquake,” the embassy said.
The New Zealand High Commission, housed in the same building, suffered “significant damage,” a statement from Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office said, adding that, “New Zealand is deeply concerned about the significant earthquake in Vanuatu, and the damage it has caused.”
Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure business in Vanuatu, said, “There’s people in the buildings in town. There were bodies there when we walked past.”
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there’s obviously some deaths there.”
The quake also collapsed at least two bridges, and most mobile networks were cut off, Thompson said.
“They’re just cracking on with a rescue operation. The support we need from overseas is medical evacuation and skilled rescue, (the) kind(s) of people that can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
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Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed onto a number of parked cars and trucks.
The streets of the city were strewn with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed.
Nibhay Nand, a Sydney-based pharmacist with businesses across the South Pacific, said he had spoken to staff in Port Vila who said most of the store there had been “destroyed” and that other buildings nearby had “collapsed.”
“We are waiting for everyone to get online to know how devastating and traumatic this will be,” Nand told AFP.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to three feet forecast for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, flooding and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report.
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Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Earthquake rocks Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, deaths feared, U.S. embassy damaged
12/16: CBS Evening News – CBS News
Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Earthquake rocks Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, deaths feared, U.S. embassy damaged