GOSHEN, NY — An upstate New York town official who shot and injured alost DoorDash delivery driverlast year wasfound guilty of multiple assault and firearms chargeson Thursday, March 26, after about three days of deliberations.
An Orange County Court jury convicted John Reilly III, 49, of first-degree assault, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, second-degree assault, and eight counts of criminal possession of a firearm in connection with the shooting of DoorDash driver Alpha Oumar Barry in May 2025. Reilly's sentencing is scheduled for May 18, and he faces up to 25 years behind bars on the top charge.
Reilly, the highway superintendent for the town of Chester, was arrested on May 3, 2025, a day after authorities said he shot at Barry's vehicle as the delivery driver attempted to leave Reilly's property. Chester is part of Orange County and is nearly 60 miles north of Manhattan.
After the verdict was delivered on March 26, Reilly was remanded to Orange County jail without bail. The $250,000 bail he had previously posted was exonerated and will be returned to his family.
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"This defendant's depraved indifference to human life was appalling and nearly resulted in the death of an innocent man," Orange County District Attorney David M. Hoovler said ina statementafter the verdict. "We can see firsthand the consequences of the use of dangerous firearms by an individual who had no business possessing a gun. ... I hope that the victim can continue to heal from the grievous wounds caused by this defendant's crimes."
During the trial, Reilly maintained that he hadacted in self-defenseand was concerned about the possibility of a home invasion or robbery. Defense attorney Thomas Arthur Kenniff said he was disappointed by the verdict and that the defense intended to appeal the decision.
"As I've said earlier, the inclusion of the depraved indifference charge we don't think it should have been in the indictment to begin with," Kenniff said after the verdict. "We don't think that should have been presented to the grand jury last year, and we don't think that it should have been allowed to go to the jury in this trial."
Prosecutors: DoorDash driver was lost while out on a delivery
At around 9 p.m. local time on May 2, 2025, Barry — who was 24 at the time and a legal immigrant from Guinea — approached Reilly's home in the town of Chester, according to prosecutors. Barry had been lost with a dead phone battery while making a food delivery and arrived, unarmed, at Reilly's front door with a bag of food, asking for help to charge his phone.
After asking Barry to leave, prosecutors said Reilly went inside the house and returned with a sling holster and a .45 caliber Glock pistol. As Barry was in the process of driving away in his Toyota Corolla, he was shot by Reilly in the driveway of the house.
Reilly had fired three shots, and one projectile pierced the trunk of the car and traveled through the driver's seat into Barry's lower back, according to prosecutors.
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Bleeding, with a bullet in his body, prosecutors saidBarry went to a Cumberland Farms storeand asked for help before leaving only after a few minutes to find his family in the nearby city of Middletown. Later that night, Barry underwent a four-hour surgery, in which more than two feet of Barry's bowel was removed, and an ostomy bag was created.
During the investigation into the incident, prosecutors said authorities executed a search warrant at Reilly's residence and recovered .45 caliber casings in the kitchen and front lawn; the projectile from the front lawn; the shoulder holster and loaded .45 caliber Glock pistol; and seven other illegally possessed pistols.
Authorities later learned that while Reilly held a federal firearms license to sell firearms, he did not have a New York state firearms license or pistol permit to lawfully own his guns, according to prosecutors.
Reilly was charged with 14 counts after beingarraigned in June 2025 for attempted second-degree murder. Reilly's wife, Selina Nelson-Reilly, wasindicted by the district attorney in October 2025for hindering prosecution and 17-counts of tampering with evidence, for deleting 17 videos from a smart doorbell camera at their house.
A shooting over pizza delivery mix-up?Small mistakes keep proving to be dangerous in USA.
Latest wrong-place shooting incident in US
Wrong-place shootingshave plagued communities across the United States for decades, with seemingly completely innocent people being fatally shot or seriously injured when they made simple mistakes. For years, such cases have renewed debates about the nation's patchwork of "stand your ground" laws.
Christopher Slobogin, law professor at Vanderbilt University and director of the school's Criminal Justice Program, previouslytold USA TODAYthat self-defense laws have proliferated in recent years, and opponents fear they could lead people to overreact and think they are legally justified.
Self-defense claims and "stand your ground" laws have been at the core of several controversial cases, including the killings ofTrayvon Martinin 2012 andAhmaud Arberyin 2020, as well as the trials ofKyle RittenhouseandDaniel Perryover the shooting deaths of protesters in 2020.
In recent years, similar cases to the shooting in Chester, New York, have sparked outrage and drawn national attention, including in November 2025, when an Indiana homeowner was accused offatally shooting a house cleanerwho went to the wrong residence.
In 2023, an86-year-old White manshotRalph Yarlafter the Black teenager went to the wrong house in Missouri. Two days after the incident, a 20-year-old womanwas shot and killed by a homeowner in upstate New Yorkwhile in a car that mistakenly turned into the wrong driveway.
Contributing: N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Jeanine Santucci, and Terry Collins, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record:Upstate New York official convicted of shooting lost DoorDash driver
