What happened to George McGarvey on New Year’s Eve likely could happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
McGarvey and his partner, Bruce Miller, were in the rear of their Gordonston residence watching television when they heard a deafening noise coming from the front of their house.
“It was close to midnight,” recalled McGarvey, explaining the couple’s annual tradition. “Every year Bruce gets out his mother’s Bible at midnight, opens it randomly and reads whatever is on that page. We then toasted with eggnog before it was literally crash, bang, boom.”
The two were shocked by the horrific noise and wondered if a tree had fallen on the house.
“We were baffled,” McGarvey said. He slowly walked down the hall and spotted a small piece of plaster on the floor. Still confused, he continued into the living room and saw that a handful of framed family photographs on a table by the front window were toppled over and shattered glass seemed to be everywhere.
Upon closer examination of the scene, McGarvey noticed a bullet hole in the bottom of one of the window’s shutters and later found a bullet in the hall.