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Moments after Derek Gair handed his best friend, Cody Gorsline, a handgun, he turned his back to get something from his dresser when he suddenly heard a gunshot.
He dove onto his bed and then “looked back at Gorsline to find him on the floor, unconscious and bleeding from the head from an apparent gunshot wound,” Trooper Tyson Havens wrote in a court document.
Gair held up his friend’s head and told him to “keep breathing.” He also yelled for someone to call 911.
Gair’s wife, Tonya, made the call, telling a dispatcher Gorsline had shot himself in the head inside her home.
Following the shooting early Sunday morning at 424 Weldon St. in Montoursville, the 24-year-old Gorsline was rushed to the Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, where he died late Monday night or sometime Tuesday.
Gorsline, a city resident, was one of a dozen guests attending a surprise 24th birthday party Saturday night for Gair that was planned by Gair’s wife, Havens said in court papers that were made public Tuesday afternoon.
“Derek Gair handed a firearm to Gorsline, at which time Gorsline either purposely or negligently pulled the trigger, shooting himself in the head,” Havens said investigators were told.
About four hours after the 2:10 a.m. shooting, Gair was interviewed by Havens at the state police barracks in the borough.
While Gair admitted that he and Gorsline “consumed alcoholic beverages during the evening, he said the two were not drunk,” according to Havens.
Gorsline, who was spending the night at the Gair home following the party, followed Gair upstairs so he could be shown where he was going to be sleeping, Havens said.
The two stopped and walked into the Gair’s master bedroom, where Gorsline noticed a gun safe just inside the bedroom door, Havens said. The guest asked Gair to show him a .38-caliber revolver that was in the safe.
Gair told Havens that he “opened the gun safe to retrieve the revolver. He opened the cylinder and showed Gorsline that it was fully loaded. Gair could not recall if he closed the cylinder or if the revolver’s hammer was forward or cocked,” Havens said in the court documents.
Gair went on to tell Havens that when he handed the revolver to Gorsline, he turned his back to “retrieve an item from his dresser.” That’s when the gun went off.
Gair said he cradled Gorsline’s head until paramedics arrived at the house and took over the fatally-wounded man’s care.
While Gair claimed the gun went off after he handed it to Gorsline, Havens said that based on examining how the bullet entered the victim’s head, it appeared “the shot could have come from either Gorsline or Gair at the time the gun was changing hands.”
No charges have been filed and the investigation is ongoing as the county’s district attorney’s office is reviewing the evidence with state police.