GASTONIA, N.C. — A jury has convicted a Gastonia man of murdering his neighbor and shooting his own wife.
Eyewitness News reporter Ken Lemon was in the courtroom Friday when Joseph Zinna apologized to the victim's family.
"I'm going to live with this forever," Zinna said.
Zinna apologized for the shootings that he said he wishes he could take back.
"It's with every fiber of my being that I apologize for the events," he said.
Minutes after a jury convicted him of first-degree murder, Zinna said he couldn't control himself on New Year's Day 2016.
He claimed that he went into a blind rage when his estranged wife said she was having an affair with the neighbor.
His wife said she never said that, and she had no relationship with their neighbor.
Zinna shot through the windshield of her car peppering her with buckshots, then went to neighbor Mark Sheridan's home, knocked on the door shot and killed him.
"I'm sorry. I know that's not enough, but that's all I have," Zinna said.
Sheridan's daughter, Kimberly Green, sat through the entire trial.
"it is gruesome and it is vicious and I never want to go through that again," Green said. "I am angry beyond belief. I have wrestled with hating him."
She told Zinna that she and her husband had to clean her father's house after the fatal shooting.
"It is not my duty to hate him," she said.
Green said she forgives the man who will serve a life sentence for her father's death.
"People need to know what loving and forgiving is, because if they don't understand that, then you'll have more cases like this and you will have more people who go off and kill people because they are angry and they hate," she said.
Before Zinna left the courtroom to begin his sentence, his attorney announced that they plan to appeal the verdict.
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