Cohoes Mayor Bill Keeler confirmed the murder-suicide at a Wednesday press conference after Gabrielle Forman, 30, was shot dead by her estranged husband.
Gabrielle Forman, 30, was killed by Jadet Forman, 37, in their second-floor apartment in Cohoes, just outside Albany, on Tuesday afternoon. The nurse, who worked at a hospital in Saratoga, had returned hours earlier from a family trip to Georgia celebrating her mother’s birthday and her sister going off to college. Police said Jadet Forman used an illegal ghost gun — a firearm assembled from parts without a serial number — before turning the weapon on himself.
“We can confirm that this was a murder-suicide. It’s clear that the husband shot his wife before turning the gun on himself,” Keeler said at the press conference Wednesday. Cohoes Police Chief Todd Waldin explained the weapon’s illegal status at the same briefing.
“The firearm would be illegal for anyone to own because it does not have a serial number on it,” Waldin said. “It can be manufactured by putting together parts that you order through the mail and combine it and create yourself,” he added.
The shooting unfolded while Gabrielle was on a FaceTime call with her mother. Her husband stormed into the room, snatched the phone, and ended the call, her cousin told WRGB. Her worried mother then asked Gabrielle’s brother to check on her — and he heard gunfire while heading to the apartment, the cousin said.
The couple had been married just two years and were in the process of divorcing, the cousin told the station. Despite the family claims that Jadet had previously been violent, police said he had no criminal history and there had been no previous 911 calls to the apartment.
Gabrielle’s family struggled to comprehend the loss. “We just can’t believe she’s gone. She was just here,” her godmother, Angelia Major, told NEWS10. “There is no explanation for it. We can’t even make sense of it.”
Her father, Owen Sterling, spoke of his daughter’s character to NEWS10. “She’s just a beautiful soul. Cannot ask for a better daughter.”
“Beautiful, smart, loving, caring,” he added.
Gabrielle was training to become a nurse practitioner and had dreamed of opening her own clinic, according to the initial reports. Police continue to investigate how Jadet Forman obtained the ghost gun, which under New York law cannot be legally sold or possessed due to its lack of a serial number. New York banned the sale and possession of ghost guns in 2021, though the weapons remain available through mail-order parts that can be assembled at home.
In the viral moment that preceded the killings, Gabrielle had been connected to her mother by video call, a routine check-in that turned horrific when her husband interrupted. The sudden end of that call set in motion the family’s desperate attempt to reach her, with her brother already too late to intervene.
Investigators have not disclosed additional details about the timeline inside the apartment or how long after the FaceTime was cut short that the shootings occurred. The case has drawn attention to both domestic violence and the ongoing challenge of ghost guns in New York, where state officials have pushed for expanded restrictions on homemade and 3D-printed firearms.