Left: Nolan Grove (York County Prison). Right: Kain Heiland (GoFundMe).
A 15-year-old Pennsylvania boy will spend upwards of three decades behind bars for shooting and killing his 12-year-old friend during an argument just before a planned sleepover.
In June, Nolan Grove was found guilty of all the charges against him — including murder in the third degree —by jurors in York County for the April 2023 death of Kain Heiland. The defendant was also found guilty of one count of illegal gun possession as a minor, carrying a firearm without a license, and four counts of reckless endangerment.
Pennsylvania is one of only three jurisdictions in the entire country that still has the crime of third-degree murder on the books.
On Thursday, York County Court of Common Pleas President Judge Maria Musti Cook handed down a sentence of between 15 and 30 years for the murder conviction. Grove was also sentenced to one to two years in prison for the possession of a firearm by a minor, and the sentences are to be served consecutively, or one after another. He was additionally sentenced to five years probation for the other counts in total. The court credited the defendant 562 days spent in pretrial detention.
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On April 1, 2023, the Pennsylvania State Police received a call about a boy lying on a pathway between two homes on First Avenue in Red Lion, a small town and suburb of the York metro area.
Grove, Kain and a third friend spent the afternoon and evening at Grove”s house. The trio was planning on spending the night together.
At some point earlier in the day, Grove had retrieved the gun used in the shooting from his home, a witness told law enforcement. This witness told police Grove was “playing” with the gun several times that day — loading it, unloading it, and activating the laser sight.
In surveillance footage, Grove can be seen pointing the gun at Kain with the laser’s dot visible on the victim’s torso.
At around 7:15 p.m., the three boys spoke with two girls because one of the boys believed the girls had a scooter that belonged to the unnamed friend. A witness told police Grove told the girls he “wasn’t afraid to shoot somebody” and would do so if he could. A surveillance camera caught the moment the defendant pointed the gun at the pair.
Yet another witness provided a screenshot of an image from a FaceTime call where Grove can be seen pointing the gun at Kain with the laser sight visible on the other boy’s body, according to a criminal complaint obtained by Scranton-based ABC affiliate WNEP.
At around 8:22 p.m., the three boys were walking through a neighbor’s yard when Grove allegedly said something about Kain’s mother, a witness told police. Kain then told Grove to be quiet.
The third friend and the other witness – who remained on the FaceTime call in question up to and during the fatal shooting – said Grove replied with something along the lines of: “you know what happens” or “you know what would happen.”
Then the younger boy was shot once in the back by his friend. The child died within a matter of seconds as the lone bullet severed his spinal cord and struck him in the heart.
The third friend said he ran home after the shooting and Grove followed him, the complaint says. The boy told police he asked Grove why he had shot Kain but received no response.
Grove called his father after the shooting. The third friend told his parents what happened and they reached out to law enforcement.
During a later interview with police, the third friend said Grove had repeatedly been needling Kain with “your mom” or “yo’ mama” jokes throughout the day and that Kain had repeatedly told Grove to “be quiet” or “shut up.”
When questioned by police, Grove said he had been in his bedroom when he heard a gunshot. Investigators noted the defendant had also changed clothes and washed his hands.
During the trial, jurors learned the defendant retrieved his father’s gun from behind an American flag-style wall safe as the friends went out for the day. Jurors were also shown another video of Grove pointing the gun at Kain’s face prior to the shooting – the dot of the laser coming to rest on the to-be-slain boy’s hand.
Grove testified his removal of the Kel-Tec .380 semi-automatic pistol from the safe was “probably the dumbest thing I’ve done,” according to York-based Fox affiliate WPMT.
Some arguments during trial focused on whether or not Grove knew the gun was loaded at the time. The defendant, for his part, testified that he did not, according to the York Daily Record.
But in the end, that question did not really matter much.
While the defense said it was “legally relevant” whether or not Grove knew the gun was loaded at the time, the state argued it was not. Finally, when deciding the question in response to a jury inquiry about legal culpability, the judge instructed the jurors: “If you think Nolan Grove intentionally pointed the gun at Kain without knowing for certainly that the gun was loaded, you can find malice.”
That finding was the distinction between third-degree murder and manslaughter – and for Grove, a matter of years or decades in prison.
