VOLUSIA COUNTY, Fla. – A Volusia County judge granted a $150,000 bond on Thursday for a woman accused of shooting and killing her husband in a Daytona Beach hospital room.
Ellen Gilland, 76, was arrested on Jan. 21 at AdventHealth Daytona Beach. She was indicted by a grand jury last week on charges of assisting self-murder/manslaughter, reduced from the first-degree murder charge she originally faced.
“I believe she belongs out,” said Gilland’s niece, Bo Timme, after the judge granted her bond on Thursday. “She’s not a threat to anyone. I’m going to take her into my home and I’m not threatened and I don’t think she’s a threat to herself.”
Gilland was initially denied bond when she faced first-degree murder charges.
“Based on the nature of the charge, Mrs. Gilland, I am going to hold you no bond on the murder charge and the remaining charges,” Judge Mary G. Jolley said during a hearing last month.
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Following the grand jury indictment, Gilland’s attorneys filed a motion requesting another bond hearing on the reduced charges.
According to police, the woman’s husband, 77-year-old Jerry Gilland, was ill for some time and he and his wife planned the shooting several weeks prior. Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young said the shooting was intended to be a murder-suicide.
Two hospital workers heard a gunshot from room 1106 and saw Gilland sitting beside the bed with her husband unresponsive in a pool of blood, a police report said. She pointed the weapon at the pair and told them to leave the room. Another staffer also entered and was told to leave.
Patients were evacuated from nearby rooms, which Young described as “a logistical nightmare” since most of the patients on the 11th floor were on ventilators.
Records show that officers attempted to negotiate with Gilland for about four hours.
“The goal was for him to do it, but he did not have the strength, so she had to carry it out for him,” Young said. “We were able to establish a dialogue with her, we used a distractionary device to get her to put that gun down long enough for us to hit her with less lethal (force) and get her into custody.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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