Despite surprise not guilty verdict for shooting girlfriend, war vet remains jailed
When jurors last week surprisingly found Gayle Blount not guilty of shooting his girlfriend five times, he likely escaped a lengthy prison stay, perhaps even a life sentence.
But he didn’t quite walk away a free man.
After the verdict, Blount was handcuffed and returned to Miami-Dade’s Turner Guilford Knight correctional facility, where he’d been jailed the past four years awaiting trial for shooting Bridget Knighton. That’s because less than three months before the May 2021 shooting in Miami Gardens, Blount, 55, was arrested and charged with domestic battery against the same woman for an incident at Denny’s on Pines Boulevard in Broward County.
Incident at Denny’s
That case sat as the Navy veteran spent the past four years fighting the attempted murder charge. Blount’s arrest report from the Broward domestic battery case indicates the couple got into a spat at Denny’s. And when Knighton stood over Blount and pushed him, her boyfriend grabbed her shoulders and pushed her into a table.
She wasn’t injured badly, but insisted on pressing charges.
Blount’s attorney Jonathan Jordan said he expects his client to be transferred to the Broward County Jail some time this week, then released with time served. Jordan said Blount has no incentive to fight the charge just to avoid a guilty plea on a misdemeanor charge.
“The priority is to get him out so he can spend time with his family,” Jordan said.
Prosecutors’ blunder
The trial almost never came to be. That’s because Monday morning just as jurors were about to convene, Blount and state prosecutors told Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Ellen Sue Venzer that they’d reached a plea deal that would have sent Blount to prison for 20 years.
But Venzer nixed the agreement and ordered a trial after learning new details about the violence in the relationship and new elements surrounding the shooting.
Last Friday at the end of a week-long trial jurors only needed a few hours to declare Blount not guilty of first-degree attempted murder or of firing a deadly missile. Blount claimed self-defense in what was admittedly a rocky relationship. Knighton said Blount shot her after she called police and threatened to break up with him.
The verdict came after a blunder by Miami-Dade state prosecutors, who felt the need to apologize to jurors for not identifying a purse on the couch next to where Knighton was sitting in Blount’s apartment when she was shot. In fact, they claimed the “magic purse” never existed.
The purse turned out to be the key piece of evidence in the case against Blount. After the prosecution’s claim that it didn’t exist, the defense blew up a still photo and showed the purse to jurors, prompting the apology. They said Blount only fired his weapon after fearing Knighton was reaching for a gun inside of it.
“This was a justifiable self-defense case,” Jordan said.
No gun belonging to Knighton was ever found.
This story was originally published February 18, 2025 at 12:02 PM.
