XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics, soc.women   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: editor@nytimes.com   
      
   A 76-year-old woman in Florida shot her husband in his hospital room   
   Saturday morning, police said.   
      
   The woman then barricaded herself in the room for hours until police were   
   able to detain her.   
      
   Daytona Beach police said the woman and her husband had made a pact to end   
   his suffering.   
      
   A woman in Florida on Saturday shot and killed her terminally ill husband   
   and barricaded herself in his hospital room in an attempt to carry out a   
   pact the couple had made, according to police.   
      
   Ellen Gilland, 76, and her husband, Jerry Gilland, 77, made an agreement   
   that if his health condition worsened, she would end his suffering and   
   kill him and then kill herself, Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari E. Young   
   said at a news conference.   
      
   "Because he was terminally ill, they had a conversation about it and they   
   actually planned this approximately three weeks ago, that if he continued   
   to take a turn for the worse, that he wanted her to end this," Young said,   
   adding that the husband did not have the strength to shoot himself, so   
   "she had to carry it out for him."   
      
   Ellen Gilland arrived at the AdventHealth hospital in Daytona Beach,   
   Florida, Saturday morning and brought a gun up to her husband's hospital   
   room on the eleventh floor. After shooting her husband in the head, she   
   "couldn't go through with" killing herself, according to Young, and   
   barricaded herself in his room.   
      
   Other patients in nearby rooms were evacuated and authorities engaged in   
   an hours-long negotiation with Ellen Gilland, who police said did not   
   threaten anyone else but would not put down her gun. "At no time were any   
   of the hospital staff threatened, or any other patients," Young said.   
      
   It was unclear how she was able to bring a gun inside the hospital, which   
   did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. In a   
   statement provided to The Washington Post, a spokesperson said: "We are   
   devastated by the tragedy that unfolded at the AdventHealth Daytona Beach   
   campus today, and our prayers are with those impacted."   
      
   Young said officers were eventually able to use a "flash-bang" device to   
   distract her and get her to lower her weapon. She was then taken into   
   custody and could be charged with first-degree murder.   
      
   Physician-assisted suicide, in which a person must be terminally ill and   
   have a prognosis of six months or less to live, is legal in 10 states and   
   Washington, DC, according to CNN: Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New   
   Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, as well as Montana and California   
   via a court ruling.   
      
   Physician-assisted suicide differs from euthanasia, in which a person   
   assists in another's suicide to end their suffering, but without any legal   
   authority. Euthanasia is illegal in all 50 states under existing homicide   
   laws.   
      
   "She's very sad," Young said of Ellen Gilland, adding: "It's a tragic   
   circumstance because it just shows that none of us are immune from the   
   trials and tribulations of life."   
      
   https://news.yahoo.com/woman-fatally-shot-her-terminally-062400201.html   
      
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