GUILTY: City man faces life sentence in fatal shooting of Billy Jo Ahearn

Left, attorney Philip Dreher and Justin Belanger listen to juror polling. At right, YCSD deputies cuff Belanger moments later; inset, Billy Jo Ahearn. (Rochester Voice photos; Ahearn/Courtesy)

DOVER - To hear the jury foreperson on Friday declare 21-year-old Justin Belanger of Rochester guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Billy Jo Ahearn must have been excruciating for the former Lafayette Street man, but when his defense team demanded jurors be polled on both charges and then hear the four men and eight women - one by one - call out "guilty" loud and clear for all the courtroom to hear may have seemed the longest minute of his young life.
Moments later, deputies from the Strafford County Sheriff's Department swooped in en masse to cuff an emotionless Belanger and usher him back to jail.
It took only about a full day of deliberations for the jury to find Belanger guilty of both "knowingly" and "recklessly" causing the death of Ahearn, who was 24 when she was struck by a bullet in the left side of her pelvis that traveled to and shattered her right hip, causing an embolism that along with blood loss caused her death at 1 a.m. on June 6, 2018.
Ahearn, who grew up in Raymond, had been part of Rochester's transient community for several months prior to her death.
Defense counsel Philip Dreher and Brett Newkirk were not available for comment after the verdicts were announced around 1:45 p.m., but Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley admitted this trial had been one of the most challenging of his career, and that he could never have done it without the help of the Rochester Police Department.
"We would not have gotten the witnesses here without first the Rochester Police investigating thoroughly this matter and also making sure we had access to these witnesses who saw relevant events and for the most part didn't want to cooperate," he said.
Hinckley also gave kudos to the court's technical team that allowed an eyewitness to the shooting - Devin Giles - to testify from his bedroom where he may be housebound for life due to a horrific collision with a dump truck in Keene last fall while riding a bicycle.
The defense team sought to portray Giles as a possible shooter due to his actions a day after the shooting when he retrieved the murder weapon from under a porch near Lafayette Street where he testified Belanger left it and then drove to Madbury with a lifelong friend and threw it in a pond there.
The weapon was never found despite the efforts of a state dive team who combed the soft bottom by hand.

Belanger faces a maximum sentence of life at his sentencing, which could come as early as later this month.
Mostly lost in the drama of Friday's guilty verdicts was the tragic death of an unintended target, whose only crime was walking on South Main Street near Friendly's restaurant with someone (Lopez) who had drawn Belanger's wrath through some slight during a confrontation the day before.
Billy Jolene (Miller) Ahearn was born on Aug. 5, 1993. Her brief obit published in The Rochester Voice on June 10, 2018, ends with, "If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane I'd walk right up to Heaven and bring you home again."