It was 3:02 p.m. Friday – the fifth day of his homicide trial – when Nolan Grove took the witness stand.
Wearing a light gray suit, white shirt and light gray tie, he took the oath and settled into the witness stand, looking a bit uncomfortable, a 15-year-old in a place usually occupied by adults, a defendant testifying on his own behalf.
Defense lawyer Brandy Hoke showed him a video – one he had seen several times during the course of the trial – of him pointing a Kel-Tec .380 at Kain Heiland as Kain was lying on the hardwood floor in Nolan’s living room. Kain had his hand over his face, the red dot illuminating the back of his hand.
Hoke asked him, “How does that make you feel?”
Nolan replied, “Mad and sad at the same time.”
A memorial for 12-year-old Kain Heiland had marked the spot on First Avenue when the boy was killed on April 1, 2023. His friend, Noland Grove, now 15, is standing trial as an adult in his shooting.
He began to weep, dabbing his eyes with a tissue. He said he was upset about “doing what wasn’t right.”
Miles is his friend, Miles Belleman – they met in fifth grade and “have been buddies ever since,” Nolan said. Belleman’s account of the last day and very last moments of Kain’s life differed substantially from the version Nolan described in his testimony.
Miles, who, like Nolan, was 13 at the time, testified that they were walking through a dark breezeway between two buildings on First Avenue in Red Lion the night of April 1, 2023, when Nolan made a joke about Kain’s mom being hot – something he and Miles had joked about earlier that day. When Kain told him to shut up, Nolan said, “You know what will happen.” And then, Miles testified, Nolan aimed the gun at Kain’s back and fired, the bullet passing through his 12-year-old friend’s body, piercing his spinal cord and heart, killing him almost instantly.
None of that happened, according to Nolan’s testimony.
In his version, there was no joke about Kain’s mom. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t level the gun at his friend’s back.
In his version, it was an accident.
Previously: Mom of Noland Grove,15, accused of killing friend, testifies he had been taught gun safety
Previously: Forgetful witness and suspect’s father testify in second day of Nolan Grove’s murder trial
Kain’s final hours, and seconds
The final hours of Kain’s life were recorded on surveillance videos culled from cameras around Red Lion, presented by the prosecution as it wrapped up its case Friday morning.
At 6:09 p.m., a Ring camera in the Belleman living room showed Miles chasing Kain with a BB gun, yelling April Fools as he leveled his BB pistol at his friend. A few moments later, the video depicted Kain running toward the stairs, the red dot from the .380 pistol brandished by Nolan alighted on his shoulder. Moments later, Kain can be heard yelling, “Take your finger off the trigger” to Nolan, who is off-camera. They left the house a few minutes later.
At that point, Kain would have two hours and 13 minutes to live.
At 6:50 p.m., the boys are captured on a surveillance camera focused on the parking lot of Bethany United Methodist Church, going after the girls who had Miles’ scooter.
At 6:53 p.m., the boys are captured on a video camera mounted on the borough’s historical society, focused on the alley beside the old train station, walking after the two girls. At one point, the video depicts Nolan pulling the pistol from the pocket of his hoodie. Kain, walking on his left, swatted at it and Nolan returned the gun to his pocket. Minutes later, the boys are seen walking on Main Street toward First Avenue. Miles had retrieved his scooter. (The video quality made it difficult to see the gun, but the investigating state police trooper said he saw it on a better, higher definition screen.
At 7:02 p.m., the historical society camera recorded them walking on North Main Street toward First Avenue, returning to Nolan’s house.
Kain had an hour and 20 minutes to live.
At 8:02 p.m., they returned to Miles’ house on West Broadway so Miles could drop off his scooter. Nolan can be seen fiddling with the gun while sitting on a couch in the living room, appearing to put the clip in its grip. They leave Miles’ house at 8:18 p.m.
Kain has just five minutes to live.
At 8:20 p.m., a surveillance camera at the Red Lion Fire Department recorded the boys running down Hyson Avenue – an alley that runs parallel to First Avenue – toward Nolan’s house at 58 First Ave. and the breezeway between 50 and 54 First Ave. A camera at a computer repair shop at the corner of Hyson Lane and North Charles Street shows the boys walking down the alley, a brief flash of the laser appeared on the sidewalk as they walked by.
Three minutes.
At 8:21 p.m., a camera focused on the parking lot of Bethany United Methodist Church recorded the boys walking past the garage behind Nolan’s house and entering Hyson Lane.
Two minutes.
At 8:22 p.m., the church surveillance camera shows them entering the breezeway.
Thirty seconds.
At 8:22:30 – the time set by a dash cam in a car parked on First Avenue capturing the audio of the gunshot – Kain’s life ended in the breezeway, the fatal shot killing him nearly instantly.
Forty-six seconds after the boys entered the breezeway, the church surveillance camera recorded Nolan and Miles running from the breezeway toward West Broadway.
Kain is not with them.
Nolan and Miles returned to Miles’ home at 8:24 p.m. At 8:27 p.m., cameras recorded them running back toward First Avenue. At 8:28 p.m., Miles headed into the breezeway. Nolan stayed in the alley. A few seconds later, Miles re-emerged from the breezeway.
Nolan went to his house.
Miles went home. There, he texted dad, who was home. He said he texted because he was afraid to tell him to his face what he had witnessed.
His dad called 911.
Nakia Schiavi, of Red Lion, helps protest in front of the York County Judicial Center in May 2023 to help bring attention to the murder of Kain Heiland.
‘A terrible mistake’
Earlier that day, Nolan was hanging out with Miles when they hooked up with Kain in the afternoon. That is about the only time the versions of that day provided by Nolan and Miles synch up.
At one point, Miles had testified that Nolen was razzing Kain about his mom, saying she was attractive, but not using that word. Miles testified that Nolan snatched Kain’s phone and texted Kain’s mom, “Hey, this is Kain’s friends. We think your (sic) really hot. Hey, can my friends tap that. Mommy.”
Kain’s mother replied, “Thanks. IMHO I’m too old for you children.”
Nolan testified that it was Miles who grabbed Kain’s phone and sent the texts. “I don’t remember me doing it,” he said. “I think I remember seeing Miles do it. We were making jokes. Teenage boys think it’s funny to do so.”
Miles testified that Nolan had the gun at his house when he and Nolan were chasing Kain through the house. Nolan was armed with his dad’s semi-automatic handgun and Miles with his BB pistol.
Nolan said that he didn’t have the gun then and that when Kain yelled, “Take your finger off the trigger,” he was yelling at Miles, not him, as Miles had testified.
Nolan said he retrieved the gun from his dad’s safe, a wall hanging fashioned to look like an American flag which unlocked with a magnet, later. He was asked whose idea it was to open the safe. He replied, “I think it was mine. It might have been Miles. I can’t recall.”
He said, “It was probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, open a firearm case I was told not to.”
He said he had previously taken the gun out of the safe. “It was not a lot,” he said. “A couple times, maybe. A lot to me is 10 or 15 times.”
Previously, Miles and others testified that he had taken the gun out of the safe to show it to them. And he testified that once, he and Miles were hanging out and he took the Kel-Tec and Miles took his dad’s girlfriend’s 9mm Ruger with a purple grip and they walked to the nearby Turkey Hill, strapped, and walked back. He said he “can’t remember why” they did that.
Nolan testified that when he took the gun from the safe, he ejected the magazine and pulled back to slide to make sure there wasn’t a round in the chamber, ready to fire. He had never been taught to do that, he said. He picked it up by watching his father with the gun and at gun auctions that he attended with his dad. Then, he said, he slid the magazine back into the grip; a round would not enter the chamber unless the slide was pulled back. After doing that, he set the gun on the kitchen counter while he went to the bathroom. He said he heard a click as he climbed the stairs. “I didn’t think much of it,” he said. Only he and Miles were in the house at the time. Kain was still outside, he said. When he returned from the bathroom, he testified, the gun was lying in a drying rack next to the kitchen sink. He said he didn’t know why it would be there or how it got there.
He put the gun back in his pocket, he said.
Not long after that, Nolan said he looked out the front window and saw the girls with a scooter, and when Miles saw them, he demanded they get his scooter back. They left the house and followed the girls. Miles testified that they both yelled at the girls to return it and that Nolan pointed the gun at the girls and said, “I’m not afraid to shoot somebody if I have to.” One of the girls testified that the boys were yelling “cuss words” at them.
Nolan testified that he was a reluctant participant in the endeavor. “I was like, ‘it’s not my scooter.’ Why do I have to go get it?” he said.
He said Miles did all the talking as they followed the girls and that he didn’t say much, asking the girls, “It’s not mine, but could you give it back?”
He said he was not angry. “I couldn’t be mad at them. It wasn’t mine.”
Asked whether he pulled out his gun and pointed it at the girls, he said, “I can’t recall. I don’t remember completely. I don’t think I would. I was never angry with them. They didn’t do anything to me.”
He admitted that he pointed the gun at Kain while the boy was lying on the floor of his living room, a moment recorded on a Facetime call Miles had made to another friend, Daniel Harris. Asked whether he pointed the gun at either Kain or Miles while playing with the laser, he said, “Uh, yeah.”
He continued, “Not that I recall at Miles. I remember pointing it at Kain.”
He added, “That was a terrible mistake.”
Linda Arvin, grandmother of Kain Heiland, holds a protest In May 2023 in front of the York County Judicial Center seeking justice for the shooting death of her grandson.
‘I was in shock’
The events that led to Kain’s death began when the boys were returning the scooter to Miles’ house on West Broadway.
Miles, on his scooter, had ridden ahead of Nolan and Kain and hid around the corner of his house, jumping out at his friends to frighten them. Nolan said it scared him, and he reached into the pocket of his hoodie and racked the .380’s slide. He felt a bullet eject, he said. He thought the gun did not have a round in the chamber. “I was extremely confused (about) where the bullet had come from,” he said.
Somehow, he said, another bullet joined that loose round in his hoodie pocket.
He said he was playing with the laser as the boys walked back to his house. After they entered the breezeway between 50 and 54 First Avenue, he said, he dropped one of the bullets and he and his friends looked for it, finding in the grass.
It was dark in the breezeway, Nolan said, “pitch black. I could barely see the ground.”
He said he regularly walked through the breezeway when he was at his father’s house, a shortcut from Miles’s house. He was “good friends” with the neighbors, and they said it was OK for him to use the breezeway rather than walk to the end of the block to get to the front of his father’s house.
He testified that there was a deep pothole in the breezeway, and he feared stepping in it. He said he pulled the gun out and activated the laser so he could see. He was able to step over the pothole, he said.
When he walks, he said, he swings his arms and, “I didn’t realize I had the gun in my hand and it went off.”
He said, “I saw orange, bright orange. At that point, I didn’t know what happened. I did not realize.”
He testified Miles said, “What the f—, Nolan.”
“We were scared,” he said. “We didn’t know what to do so we ran out.”
Initially, he said, he couldn’t see, his vision returning as he and Miles ran back to Miles’ house.
He did not remember saying, “I’m sorry” to Kain, something Miles had testified to.
“I did not know what happened,” Nolan testified. He didn’t believe the gun was loaded. He said he believed he had cleared it, and that there wasn’t a round in the chamber, locked in and ready to fire.
At Miles’ house, he testified, Miles told him he had dropped his BB gun and they had to go back to get it. They returned, and as Miles dashed into the breezeway, Nolan stayed in the alley.
“I was in shock,” he said. “My brain was still trying to catch up. My brain was still at Miles’ house.”
He went into his father’s house, climbing up to the balcony to enter through his second-floor bedroom window.
“I didn’t know what to do at this point,” he said.
He called his dad’s phone. His dad didn’t pick up. He called his dad’s girlfriend’s phone, she answered, and put his dad on the line. He told his dad something had happened. His dad already knew about the shooting; a neighbor had called him, believing that the body in the breezeway was Nolan’s.
He told his dad he was in his bedroom when he heard a gunshot and that he was having an asthma attack, something that happens rarely and when it does, he used his dad’s girlfriend’s inhaler for relief.
He stripped off his clothes, tossing his jeans in a hamper and his hoodie on the floor, and changed into a fresh hoodie and a pair of basketball shorts. State police later seized the clothing, and later tests allegedly found that the jeans and the hoodie were festooned with gunshot residue. It was hot, he said, so he turned on his air conditioner to cool down and get some air circulating,
Asked why he lied to his father, he said, “I was still in shock. My brain was trying to catch up. I was just saying something.”
He replaced the missing bullets in the gun – the one he fired and the other he lost – and put it back in the American flag safe, he said. He got the bullets from a box atop the gun safe in his father’s bedroom, one of three gun safes in the house. When state police took the gun while executing a search warrant, the clip contained five bullets, two different brands of rounds.
His father and his girlfriend returned a short time later, allowed to enter the house by a state police trooper who was securing the crime scene.
As his testimony wound down, after two and a half hours on the witness stand, he was asked whether he intended to hurt anybody that day.
“I did not,” he replied.
David Sunday, York County District Attorney, and the Pennsylvania State Police update the media regarding developments in the homicide of 12-year-old Kain Heiland at a news conference on May 5, 2023.
His interview with investigators
Less than two hours after the shooting – at about 10 p.m. – Nolan was brought to the state police barracks in Loganville with his father, Jon. Corporal Travis Vankuren, assigned as lead investigator in the case, allowed him some “quiet time” with his father before conducting his interview. He explained that’s standard procedure in cases involving juveniles, allowing them time to speak to their parents.
During that “quiet time,” he asked to use the bathroom, washing his hands while he was there. Tests later were indicative, but not conclusive, that he had gunshot residue on his hands.
“They didn’t tell me, ‘You can’t wash your hands, you can’t do this, you can’t do that’,” Nolan testified. “I was never told I couldn’t wash my hands.”
At 11:24 p.m., according to the video recording on the interview, Vankuren and Trooper David Petrosky entered the room and read Nolan his rights, asking him whether he understood that he has the right remain silent and the right to a have a lawyer present and the right to end the interview at any time. They also asked his father whether he understood his son’s rights.
Vankuren told him he was under no obligation to speak to them and asked whether he wanted to.
“No,” Nolan answered. “A little bit.”
“A little bit would be a yes,” Vankuren said, adding that he could end the interview at any time.
Vankuren asked him about what he did that day. He told the trooper that he was hanging out with Miles earlier and that he had returned home at about 5:30 or 5:45 p.m. He said Kain was not with them and that he hadn’t seen him. He told the trooper it was “just me and Miles.”
When he got home, he said, the house was locked; his father and his girlfriend had gone to Harrisburg with friends that evening.
He told the trooper once he was home, he stayed home. His father piped in, “I told him to stay in the house.”
He told the trooper he was in his bedroom when he heard the gunshot from two doors down. It was a single shot, he said. He didn’t hear anything else, no people talking or yelling or screaming.
He said he looked out a window, but didn’t see anything. Then, he told the trooper, he went downstairs to the kitchen to get a bottle of water.
Toward the end of the interview, Petrosky asked him, “Are you aware we already talked to Miles? It’s important you tell the truth.”
At that point – a part of the video not shown to the jury – Nolan asked for a lawyer.
Asked why he lied to the trooper, Nolan told the jury, “I was scared about what just happened, what I had done.”
Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.
This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Noland Grove takes stand in his homicide trial