'I feel the jury let Caitlyn down': Caitlyn Kaufman's parents disappointed with results of trial
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — The parents of the Butler County native who was killed while driving to work two years ago in Tennessee are trying to move on without their daughter.
"I'm just doing the best I can," Rick Kaufman said. "Like I said, I cry every day."
"I take it day by day, hour by hour," Diane Kaufman said.
Every day, Diane Kaufman wears a necklace with her daughter's fingerprint. It is a reminder of the daughter she lost and the burden she still carries.
"It's just very lonely for me," she said. "She was my morning text, my morning call."
On Dec. 3, 2020, Caitlyn Kaufman was shot and killed as she drove to St. Thomas West Hospital in Nashville. The ICU nurse from Butler County was 26 years old.
Police arrested James Cowan and Devaunte Hill, charging them with first-degree murder. Neither man knew Kaufman.
"I remember gasping for air when I saw them for the first time," Diane Kaufman said. "I kept looking at them, and not once did either one of them show an ounce of remorse for what they did."
During the trial, little things from friends kept them going.
"For every day of the trial, she had a card for us to open that to give us courage and hope," Diane Kaufman said.
Before the verdict, they were hopeful. Then in a moment, frustrated. A jury convicted Hill, the shooter, of second-degree murder but acquitted Cowan, the driver.
"I feel the jury let Caitlyn down," Diane Kaufman said.
It is something the parents grapple with months later.
"I sat there after the trial and I felt so guilty and so bad because I felt I let her down," Diane Kaufman said.
"(Hill) gets slapped in the hand for 25 years. It's not right," Rick Kaufman said.
They say they're trying to go day by day. Her father said he won't be able to forgive Hill.
"One day he took my little girl away from me and he will never get no forgiveness from me," Rick Kaufman said.
BC3, the nursing school in Butler County where Caitlyn Kaufman trained, is naming a simulation observation room in her memory inside the new Victor K. Phillips Nursing and Allied Health Building opening this fall.
Outside the building, three benches will bear Caitlyn's name. Friends raised money for one bench, the family raised money for the other two. And Caitlyn's name will also remain on a donor recognition wall.
The gestures won't bring Caitlin back and they won't resolve some of the anger, sadness and pain Diane and Rick Kaufman still feel. But in some small way, if Caitlyn's name and the life she lived can inspire future nurses, perhaps some good can come of the worst of moments.
Diane Kaufman says the thing she misses the most is her constant conversations with her daughter.
"I haven't disconnected Caitlyn's cell line because I like to call it to hear her voice and I'll carry on a conversation with her when I get in the car, just like old times," she said.
Diane says part of the healing process is to be kind to others and to help them through horrific ordeals.
James Cowan is being held in federal custody yet to be tried on gun charges and may eventually face as much time behind bars as his cousin, Devaunte Hill.
