Nolan Grove is a teen killer from Pennsylvania who would murder twelve year old Kain Heiland
According to court documents thirteen year old Nolan Grove would take a gun from his father’s safe and spend the day playing with the weapon. Later that day Grove would fatally shoot twelve year old Kain Heiland as the two walked through a breezeway in Red Lion Pennsylvania
Nolan Grove would be arrested and charged with murder
At trial Nolan Grove would tell the jurors that the shooting was accidental as he did not mean to shoot Kain Heiland however prosecutors believe the killing was deliberate
In the end the jury would convict Nolan Grove of third degree murder and the judge would sentence him to fifteen to thirty years in prison
Nolan Grove Case
About an hour into the sentencing hearing for Nolan Grove, convicted of third-degree murder in the shooting death of his friend, 12-year-old Kain Heiland, York County Judge Maria Musti Cook had a few things to say before imposing her sentence.
The judge called the case “tragic,” noting that Nolan Grove was 13 when he shot his friend in the back in a dark breezeway in Red Lion on April 1, 2023. She said it “is one of those cases you hope to never encounter, but in this day and age, you do.”
She went on to review the trial, how video recorded that day, and played before the jury, showed “the personification of a bully.” Walking around with a gun, she said, “empowered Nolan, made him feel like a better person, a bigger man, a young adult” and said that it made him “able to feel some kind of power over his friends, of those he considered his friends.”
“To this day, I’ll never understand how you can point a laser (sight) at your best friend while he is cowering on the floor and telling you not to do it,” the judge said.
After the shooting – Nolan Grove testified that it was an accident and that he didn’t know the gun was loaded – the judge said he “took no accountability of any kind.” He lied to his parents, she said. He lied to the police. He washed his hands and changed his clothes to conceal evidence of his culpability. He unloaded the gun and put it back in his father’s gun safe.
The worst thing, though, was he ran away, leaving his friend to die on the sidewalk.
“This is a tragedy that never should have happened,” Cook told the packed courtroom. “But nothing I can do can change the fact that it happened.”
With that, the judge sentenced Nolan Grove to the mandatory sentence for the offense – 15 to 30 years. She also sentenced him to serve an additional one to two years for endangering his friend’s life. He will be at least 30 before he is eligible for parole.
Nolan Grove, who will turn 16 on Sept. 11, was found guilty of third-degree murder on June 10, the jury finding that he acted with malice when he shot Kain in the back with his father’s Kel-Tec .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol in a breezeway off First Avenue.
Testimony during the trial revealed that Nolan Grove had retrieved the gun from a wall safe fashioned after an American flag in his father’s house and had been playing with it as he hung out with Kain and another friend, Miles Belleman, that sunny spring day.
Miles had testified that Nolan had goofed around with the gun during the day, pointing its laser sight and unloading and loading it. At one point, they spotted two girls with Miles’ scooter and chased them down. A surveillance camera caught the moment when Nolan pulled the gun from his hoodie pocket and pointed it at the girls, the girls testifying that he said he wasn’t afraid to shoot someone if he had to.
Later, during some roughhousing at Nolan’s house, a video recorded from Facetime showed Nolan pointing the gun at Kain’s face as Kain lay on the living room floor, shielding his face with his hand, the laser alighting on the back of his hand.
At 8:22 p.m., the boys were walking through a breezeway between two houses in the first block of First Avenue in Red Lion, two houses up from Nolan’s house, when Nolan made a crack about Kain’s mom, Miles testified. Kain told him to shut up. According to Miles, Nolan said, “You know what happens” and then shot Kain in the back, the bullet severing his spinal cord and piercing his heart. Kain was dead in seconds.
Nolan Grove had testified that he didn’t know the gun was loaded, the judge ruling later that, in accordance with previous court rulings, that it didn’t matter whether he did or not. He also said he had used the gun’s laser sight to illuminate the dark breezeway and did not realize his finger was on the trigger.
His attorney had argued that the act was reckless and that Grove was too immature to understand the consequences of his actions.
The prosecutor argued that the evidence showed that Grove acted with “a wanton and willful indifference to the value of human life,” the legal definition of malice as it applies to murder.
The sentencing
The crowd gathered long before the scheduled time for the court hearing outside Courtroom 7006 in the York County Judicial Center – Nolan’s family at one end of the hall and Kain’s family at the other. Sheriff’s deputies escorted members of Nolan’s family into the courtroom, seating them behind the defense table. Then, they escorted Kain’s family, seating them across the aisle. The courtroom filled quickly. A deputy told those who couldn’t get in, “There’s no room” and that they couldn’t stand outside the courtroom doors.
The defense went first with Nolan’s mother, Danielle Nace, reading a letter she wrote to the judge from the witness stand. She said later that she agonized over the letter, spending a month revising and editing it, not knowing exactly what to say.
She asked for leniency for her son, saying, “Nolan is just a kid himself.” She said there were no winners in this case, that the tragedy had beset all who were involved. She questioned whether she made mistakes raising Nolan and said, “The world we live in today and the world I grew up in are not the same.”
She said Nolan “has a huge heart” and that he “likes everybody and has a need to be liked by everyone.”
She touched on the animosity that the case has sparked, with the families trading accusations and bad blood on social media and in person. She said, “I’m sorry this happened and I hope everybody involved finds peace and comfort and allows the healing to begin.”
Then, Nolan Grove spoke. Seated between his lawyers, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, his hands cuffed, his ankles shackled, he said, “I’m sorry for everything that happened.”
Through sobs, he said Kain was his best friend for five years. “I still think about Kain every day,” he said.
He turned to Kain’s family. “I am deeply and sincerely sorry for your loss and for the pain my actions have caused. I am truly sorry.”
Then, Kain’s family and friends read their statements into the record.
His grandmother, Kathy Rexroth, said her family’s “world shattered” on April 1, 2023. Their lives will never be the same, she said, adding that their lives contain “nothing but grief and emptiness.” She said, “Kain didn’t just lose his life that day. He took ours with him.”
“No penalty will bring him back,” she said. “But I hope it brings some sense of justice for the pain and suffering (Nolan) has caused.”
Kain’s mother, Devin Rexroth, began her statement saying, “I never thought I’d have time to write about my child in the past tense.” Kain was her eldest child. He was her son and her friend and big brother to his siblings. Every day, she said, is “a struggle.” Every day is filled with grief and depression, she said. Every night is filled with nightmares and terror
She implored the judge to “give my son the justice he deserves.”
Other friends and relatives followed, an aunt, a cousin, his best friend, the neighbor who went to his body in the breezeway. They all described the pain they’ve felt since that day, the fear, the horror, the sadness. One friend said he felt he didn’t want to live, that his depression led to a stay in mental hospital.
Kain’s father, Brian Heiland, said, “He was an amazing kid. He helped change my life and now I have to live without that now.” He said he wasn’t there to judge Nolan. “God’s going to be the one that judges you,” he told Nolan. “Take your time. Do it like a man. Change your life, man.”
Another friend said, “As my parents say, you do the crime, you do the time.”
After imposing the sentence, Judge Cook turned to Nolan Grove and told him that how he defines himself will be determined by “how you come back from this.”
She told him he is going to be around some very bad people for the next fifteen-plus years of his life, inmates who would school him, providing a post-GED education in crime. Or he could find the inmates who are trying to change, trying to make the best of prison, to learn from their mistakes.
“It’s up to you at this point,” she told him.
The judge then turned to the gallery. She said spreading rumors and lies and negativity on Facebook and social media would just make things worse for those who do so.
“So let’s just all be adults out there,” the judge said.
After the hearing, Kain’s family left after meeting with prosecutor Taylor Katherman.
On the sidewalk, Nolan’s mother spoke to one of her son’s lawyers, Brandy Hoke, about what happens next. She feared what her teenaged son was facing for the next 15 years. And she felt horrible for Kain’s family. She said she hoped they find peace, and while she can sympathize with them, “I don’t know what that feels like.”
Nolan Grove Now
| Name | Name Type |
| NOLAN DONALD GROVE | Commit Name |
Parole Number:
361LG
Age:
16
Date of Birth:
09/11/2009
Height:
6′ 01″
Gender:
MALE
Citizenship:
UNKNOWN
Complexion:
LIGHT
Current Location:
