‘I held the gun behind his ear. I pulled it away and asked him if he was sure,’ Ellen Gilland told the court, choking back tears.
‘He raised his hand, and placed it on my arm and pushed the gun to his head.
‘There was a loud bang – and he was gone.’
That was the moment the elderly woman shot and killed her terminally ill husband Jerry in his Florida hospital bed in January 2023.
Gilland then holed herself up inside the room in an hours-long stand-off where she waved the gun at hospital staff and fired another shot, before being taken into custody by police.
Last week, at her sentencing hearing, the diminutive 78-year-old slowly and carefully used her walking frame to make her way up to the stand inside a Florida courtroom.
Speaking in a softly-spoken voice, the elderly woman – who uses hearing aides and has several health conditions – wiped away tears as she told the judge how she and her beloved husband had made a murder-suicide pact because they felt they had been left with no other option.
She was sentenced to a year in prison.
Ellen and Jerry Gilland (pictured together) were childhood sweethearts and had been married for 53 years
Now, Gilland’s family is speaking out to slam the judge’s decision to hand the 78-year-old jail time for the mercy killing of her husband of five decades.
In an interview with DailyMail.com, Gilland’s niece Beatrice ‘Bo’ Timme argued that her elderly aunt should have come home with her and blasted the sentence as disproportionate to the crime.
‘There’s drunk drivers in the state who have killed people and they’ve got less time than her,’ Timme said.
‘She didn’t hurt anyone in the public and she never would. She never had any intention of harming anyone else.’
Timme, whose late mom was Gilland’s older sister, hit out at the hospital claiming its poor care of her uncle led to the tragic circumstances and left her aunt feeling there was no other way.
‘There were no alternatives in my aunt’s mind,’ she said.
She added: ‘I’m disappointed in the outcome. I’m being told that’s the best outcome and I understand that she faced these charges but I really thought she’d be home with me right now.’
Ellen and Jerry were childhood sweethearts.
Last week, at her sentencing hearing, 78-year-old Ellen Gilland slowly and carefully used her walking frame to make her way up to the stand inside a Florida courtroom
They had first met in the eighth grade, before falling in love and getting married.
‘I’ve known Ellen and Jerry my entire life,’ said Timme, 63.
‘I’ve only ever really known them as Aunt Ellen and Uncle Jerry. They were in love since the eighth grade. They were always together. I never even once saw them have an argument.’
She added: ‘Here’s the thing I like to tell people. If either one of them had come home and said ‘I want to buy a llama,’ the other one would have started building the fences. That’s who they were. They would have done anything for each other.’
They had not long marked their 53rd wedding anniversary when Jerry was admitted to hospital in December 2022.
He was treated for sepsis and acute pancreatitis and underwent a tracheotomy.
But the 77-year-old’s health continued to rapidly worsen.
Timme said her aunt kept the family in the dark about how sick Jerry was.
Ellen and Jerry Gilland pictured in undated photo. Their niece tells DailyMail.com that the couple ‘would have done anything for each other’
‘Unfortunately my aunt did not really reach out to me when he got sick,’ she said.
‘I had called her a couple of days before the incident – so sometime around January 18 or 19 – and she told me he was very sick.
‘But she did not want me to come visit as she didn’t want me to see him like that. She was trying to protect me, thinking I’d be upset seeing him in the condition he was in.’
Despite her aunt’s efforts to shelter her, Timme made plans to go and visit her uncle at AdventHealth Daytona Beach hospital on January 22 2023.
But that day never came.
One day earlier, on January 21, Gilland took her husband’s gun from their home, cleaned it, bought some ammunition and took it to the hospital.
In court, she testified how Jerry didn’t want to suffer anymore and had begged her to help him end his life.
Weeks earlier, they made a murder-suicide pact.
Initially, she said the plan was that he would shoot her first and then turn the gun on himself.
But, by that point, Jerry had become so weak he was unable to physically lift the firearm.
Gilland told the court how she held the gun to Jerry’s head, and he placed his hand on hers, before she pulled the trigger.
As soon as she shot him, she recalled that she became hysterical.
What followed next was a four-hour-long stand-off with hospital staff and police.
Several hospital staff including nurses and security staff described how they entered the room and Gilland pointed the gun at them.
When officers arrived on the scene, Gilland fired one shot in their direction, police said.
Gilland testified that she had picked up the gun to shoot herself in the head when flash bangs were thrown into the room and the gun went off.
Ellen Gilland – who walks with a walker and has several health issues – is seen in court for her bond hearing in 2023
Ultimately, a SWAT team entered the room and arrested her.
Timme revealed the moment she learned about the shocking incident on the news.
‘The way I found out was I saw it scroll across the bottom of my television screen,’ she said.
‘I saw her name scroll across and what had happened.’
It didn’t make any sense to her, she said.
‘I basically had a massive panic attack. I was shocked and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.’
The family quickly rallied around Gillard and found her attorneys.
She was initially charged with first-degree murder and three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and was facing life in prison.
Bodycam footage shows the hours-long stand-off inside AdventHealth Daytona Beach hospital on January 21 2023
Ellen Gilland holed herself up in a hospital room and pointed the gun at staff before she was arrested
But she was then indicted on lesser charges of assisting self-murder/manslaughter, two counts of aggravated assault with a firearm and one count of aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer.
She was released on $150,000 bond and moved in to Timme’s home, where she had lived ever since.
Timme said that, even from the get-go, she never doubted Gilland’s version of events about why she killed Jerry or about how the stand-off unfolded at the hospital.
‘I have never had any doubts that she did what he asked her to do,’ she said.
‘She would have done anything for him. And vice versa, they would have done anything for each other. That’s the couple they were and the couple I knew.’
‘So no, I’ve never had any doubts that she had any animosity towards him, that she didn’t want to be bothered by him anymore. I’ve heard that from people and that is not at all what happened.’
She added: ‘I fully believe she had no intention to harm any other person in that hospital except to kill herself and my uncle. I believe her… She was absolutely terrified. The standoff was terrifying for her.’
As far as her niece is concerned, Gilland felt there was no other way out for her and Jerry than for them both to die.
Ellen Gilland seen in a mugshot after her arrest. She pleaded no contest to lesser charges
‘There were no alternatives in my aunt’s mind,’ she said.
Timme believes that some blame for what happened lies with the hospital where Jerry was being treated.
She said that the elderly couple was never offered comfort care or hospice care for Jerry and that her aunt felt the medical staff were uncooperative and unhelpful.
Her aunt was also unaware that there might even be an option to take her husband home to see out his final days.
‘They did a horrible job of communicating with her,’ Timme claimed.
‘For an attorney [in court] to say she was educated and should have known [that he could have had comfort or hospice care]. Well, a lay person in a hospital is at a huge disadvantage. My aunt is an artist and a teacher, she’s not a medical professional. She wouldn’t know if those things were available. And she was never ever told that.’
If the elderly couple had been made aware that Jerry could have entered hospice care, Timme believes that the tragic outcome could have been avoided.
‘That’s a failing on the hospital’s part that contributed to these circumstances. So when I say I think she should have been able to come home, it’s because I think there’s a lot of things that contributed to this,’ she said.
Jerry Gilland (pictured) had begged his wife to help him die and they made a murder-suicide pact, she told the court
‘And that’s the real problem in all of this. She had not been offered any alternative. For her, there was no alternative.’
In December, Gilland pleaded no contest to charges of manslaughter with a firearm and three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
At her sentencing last week, Judge Kathryn Weston accepted Gilland’s version of why she did what she did and empathised with her situation.
But she said that there were other victims in the case – and that Gilland should serve time for the impact her actions had on hospital staff and patients.
The 78-year-old was sentenced to a year in prison, including 42 days time served. She has also been ordered to write apology letters to the victims.
She had faced probation to up to 10 years in prison on the charges.
Timme believes some of the witnesses had an ulterior motive when testifying to the court.
‘It was really hard to sit on my hands and listen to the testimony of the so-called victims who I believe were not testifying in a non-judgmental way,’ she said.
Ellen Gilland speaks at her sentencing where she was jailed for one year for killing her terminally ill husband
‘They were testifying completely and absolutely because they wanted my aunt to go to prison because they want a settlement from the hospital… That’s just my opinion but that skews their testimony in my mind.’
While she acknowledges that the judge could have handed the elderly woman a harsher penalty, Timme feels that Gilland’s age and the fact that she didn’t harm anyone beside Jerry should have resulted in a different outcome.
‘For the last two years, I was certain she would come home with me or maybe be put on probation or community confinement. I think that would have been a more appropriate sentence for someone her age – not county jail which is where she is now,’ she said.
Timme always thought her Aunt Ellen would end up coming back home with her.
Instead, as she spoke to DailyMail.com, she was heading to visit the 78-year-old in Volusia County Jail, where she is being held before being transferred to state prison.
Timme said she’s now deeply concerned how the 78-year-old will cope with life behind bars.
‘I hope she’s okay. It just makes me worry a lot about her,’ she said.
‘I’m really missing her and I’m really upset.’
She added: ‘I mean, my god, she’s 78 years old. She doesn’t have her hearing batteries. She doesn’t have her walker. She doesn’t have the things she needs.’
Ellen Gilland and her husband Jerry pictured together. Gilland’s family have stood by her throughout and are worried about the 78-year-old now spending time in prison
Gilland’s family members have vowed to continue to stand by her while she serves her sentence.
And Timme plans to push for a ‘dying with dignity’ law to come into force in Florida to help other families suffering with terminal illnesses.
As for Gilland, Timme said her aunt desperately misses the man she spent more than five decades of her life with.
At her sentencing, she paid tribute to her ‘remarkable’ and ‘kind, generous, funny and loving’ husband.
‘We supported each other through wonderful and sometimes not so wonderful times,’ she told the court.
She tearfully added: ‘I miss him and will continue to miss him for the rest of my life.’
‘Of course, she wishes she still had her husband. She misses him terribly, she’s still grieving and mourning,’ Timme said.
‘We talk about him all the time and she’s always telling stories about him. She just wishes he was still here.’
