At 79, Ellen Gilland says she has made peace with the choice that sent her to prison: shooting her terminally ill husband in a Florida hospital room as part of what she calls a mutual end-of-life pact.

“There wasn’t anything else to do,” Gilland told Fox 35 Orlando, three years after she smuggled a gun into her husband Jerry’s hospital room in Daytona Beach and fired a single shot into his head. The killing, meant to be followed by her own suicide, instead spiraled into an hours-long armed standoff that locked down the hospital and traumatized staff and patients.

Gilland says she and Jerry, whom she had known since middle school, made the agreement weeks earlier as his illness worsened. She brought his old gun into the room, sat with him talking, and then carried out what she believed was an act of mercy. But when the moment came to turn the weapon on herself, she couldn’t do it.

When hospital staff entered the room, Gilland—overwhelmed and distraught—pointed the gun at them and ordered them to leave, triggering a police siege. Body-camera footage later captured an officer shouting, “Tell me what’s going on! I don’t want to hurt you!”

A judge ultimately accepted that the killing was part of a suicide pact, but said the terror inflicted on others could not be ignored. Gilland was sentenced to one year in prison and 12 years of probation after pleading no contest to manslaughter with a firearm and multiple aggravated assault charges.

One nurse testified that the incident ended his career. He said he quit after the shooting, no longer felt safe in hospitals, and suffered recurring nightmares.

Gilland says prison nearly killed her. Six weeks into her sentence, she suffered a heart attack and spent the remainder of her incarceration in the infirmary. She was released in November 2025.

“Most of the guards were accepting,” she said. “Some were very rude—shouting, name-calling.”

Now free, Gilland performs court-ordered community service and has begun working at a local animal shelter. She says she is trying to figure out how to live the rest of her life without the man she calls her best friend.

“I’m accepting the consequences,” she said. “I did what I did.”

Gilland also says she plans to advocate for legalized assisted suicide, arguing that what happened in that hospital room was the result of a system that leaves desperate people with impossible choices.

“I don’t want people feeling sorry for me,” she said. “I have to survive after this.”