Man Shoots Walking Alive Girlfriend Over Walking Dead Argument
This article is more than 2 years old
AMC’s The Walking Dead has been the source of some emotional extremes for me in the past few years. It’s usually excitement, though the first part of the second season bored my pants off. There’s both humor and sadness involved as well, with the slightest bit of fear lurking around. But even though there were times when I wanted to reach through the TV and pour hot tar on both Shane and Carl’s heads, rarely has anger been as issue for me. Jared M. Gurman apparently can’t say the same.
Sunday night, the 26-year old Gurman went out with his girlfriend of 3 1/2 years, Jessica Gelderman, 27, and the two got into a heated argument over Walking Dead, presumably the actual chances of the show’s premise happening in the real world. Nassau Detective Lieutenant Raymond Cote says, “I just know that he felt very adamant that there could be some type of military mishap that would result in some sort of virus or something being released that could cause terrible things to happen.” Gelderman understandably thought his idea was “ridiculous,” and the two spent most of the night arguing, escalating through text messages after she left his house for her own.
Newsday says that when she returned later, she found Gurman sitting on his stairs holding his .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle. Despite her attempts to calm him down and get him back into the house, he pointed the rifle fired one round into her back as she climbed the stairs, police say. The bullet pierced her lung and diaphragm, shattering ribs in the process. She is in stable condition at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, where Gurman drove Gelderman after the reality of the situation hit.
Gurman was charged with second-degree attempted murder at his arraignment on Tuesday, though his attorney Edward L. Lieberman entered a not guilty plea to the court. Later, he is quoted as saying “The rifle went off accidentally,” which is I guess the only thing you can possibly say in such an obvious case.
Neither AMC nor anyone involved with The Walking Dead has responded to what it feels like having a fan base that includes such fucking morons as Gurman. I’m not going to go all Bob Costas in here, but I’d at least like to think that most people would keep their guns in place until an accident happened, and not take them out specifically to cause an accident. I hope they have cable in whatever jail he’s going to. Wait, no I don’t.
