Prosecutors said Damien Hebbeler admitted firing the fatal shot, and jurors recommended a 50-year prison term after hearing testimony that he carried a “special bullet.”
VANCEBURG, Ky. — A Lewis County jury has convicted a Kentucky man of intentional murder in the 2023 shooting death of his girlfriend, rejecting the case as an accident and recommending that Damien Hebbeler serve 50 years in prison after testimony about a “special bullet.”
The verdict, returned March 24, closes the central phase of a case that had drawn attention in northeastern Kentucky since the night of the shooting in Garrison. Prosecutors said Hebbeler, now 23, killed Kylie Marie Weitz at close range on Aug. 9, 2023. State officials cast the trial as a domestic violence prosecution and said the evidence included Hebbeler’s own statements, prior threats and testimony that he kept a particular round with him before the killing. Formal sentencing is scheduled for June 5.
The case began shortly after 6 p.m. on a summer Wednesday when Kentucky State Police Post 8 was asked to investigate an unresponsive woman at a home on Willis Lane in Garrison. Local officials said the first 911 report described the shooting as accidental. Lewis County Sheriff Johnny Bivens told troopers the victim had suffered a gunshot wound to the face. When troopers reached the house, they found Weitz on the floor near the front door frame, and Lewis County Coroner Tony Gaydos pronounced her dead at the scene. About three hours after that first emergency call, Hebbeler was arrested. Investigators said he admitted that he had pointed a loaded pistol at Weitz’s face and pulled the trigger. That early shift, from an accident report to a homicide arrest in one evening, set the course for the case that followed through district court, indictment and trial.
By the time jurors heard the case this month, prosecutors said the evidence went beyond the physical scene inside the home. Attorney General Russell Coleman’s office said Hebbeler told the court he carried a “special bullet” and that the same round was used to shoot Weitz in the face and kill her. The attorney general’s office also said evidence showed Hebbeler had made statements less than a year before the shooting that he wanted to kill Weitz. A Lewis County jury found him guilty of intentional murder, a Class A felony under Kentucky law, and recommended a 50-year sentence. Kentucky State Police handled the investigation, while Assistant Attorney General Tony Skeans and Tim Cocanougher, head of the attorney general’s Special Prosecutions Unit, prosecuted the case. Public summaries released after the verdict do not provide a fuller explanation of motive, a complete witness list or a detailed public account of the defense theory presented at trial.
Weitz was 20. In her obituary, published under the name Kylie Marie Weitz Willis, she was described as a Garrison resident who worked at Buffalo Wild Wings and had taken part in cheerleading, track, volleyball and lifeguard work. The notice said she enjoyed traveling, going out to eat and spending time with friends, and it listed a memorial service held Aug. 17, 2023, at Globe Family Funeral Chapel in Garrison. Those details stood apart from the blunt language of police records and courtroom filings, but they also showed why the case carried weight in a small Lewis County community where the death, arrest and funeral arrangements all became public within days. For state prosecutors, the case also fit a broader message about intimate-partner violence. Coleman said the verdict delivered “hard-won justice” and showed that “Kylie Marie Weitz’s life mattered,” placing the case in the larger context of how Kentucky officials describe domestic violence prosecutions.
The procedural trail stretched over more than two and a half years. Hebbeler was 20 when he first appeared in Lewis District Court in August 2023, where District Judge Paul Craft appointed public defender Alea Hipes and set the case on its next course. By late September 2023, a Lewis County grand jury had returned a murder indictment tied to Weitz’s death. From there, the case moved through the normal pretrial steps before reaching a Lewis County jury on March 24, 2026. The jury’s finding of intentional murder did not itself end the case, because a formal sentencing hearing still must follow. That hearing is set for June 5. The public record so far does not show any final ruling beyond the jury’s recommendation, and no broader public explanation has been released about whether defense lawyers are expected to seek a different outcome at sentencing or pursue later appeals. What is clear is that the conviction has fixed the next milestone on the court calendar and narrowed the remaining questions to punishment and whatever post-trial action may come after it.
The public record leaves behind two sharply different pictures of the same case. One is the courtroom account: a close-range shot inside a home, a woman found near a doorway, an arrest within hours and a conviction built in part on the defendant’s own statements. The other is the personal portrait that surfaced in family notices after the killing. In that obituary, relatives and friends said they would “sadly miss her,” a brief line that gave the case a human measure beyond the charge, the verdict and the recommended term. Coleman, speaking after the jury’s decision, said the outcome affirmed that Weitz’s life mattered. In a rural county where court hearings and obituaries can travel quickly through the same community, those two voices, one official and one personal, help explain why the verdict landed as more than a routine criminal case. It marked the end of the trial, but not the end of the public reckoning around a young woman’s death.
Hebbeler remains convicted of intentional murder as he awaits sentencing in Lewis County. The next major public step is the June 5 hearing, when a judge is expected to enter sentence after the jury’s 50-year recommendation and move the case from trial to its next legal stage.
Author note: Last updated March 30, 2026.