After Girlfriend Breaks Up, Man Spends 25 Minutes Learning How to Shoot Her Gun, Then Kills Her: DA

As his murder trial kicked off on Tuesday, prosecutors said that the fatal evening began on May 17, 2025, with the young couple out drinking at a bar in West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, as detailed by Fox29. Later that night, they returned home where Wiest told Dutkiewicz that she was breaking up with him.

"She couldn’t have known she’d pay for her decision with her life," Assistant District Attorney Yasmine Finnegan said in court, per The Philadelphia Enquirer. "He formulated and plan and decided to kill her."

Prosecutors called several witnesses on the first day of Dutkiewicz's trial, including Wiest's older sister, who testified that Wiest had been wanting to break up with her boyfriend since March, but apparently felt bad about doing it right before a planned trip that the Dutkiewicz family had paid for.

That trip occurred in early May, with Wiest purportedly telling her sister, per testimony, that she wanted to wait to see how the trip went before making a final decision on her future with or without Dutkiewicz.

The bartender who served the couple that night testified that he saw no indications that Dutkiewicz was too intoxicated. He said that he didn't necessarily like Dutkiewicz yelling at him twice to get his attention, but he still served the table two rounds of drinks. This was just hours before the fatal shooting that would later occur.

Neighbors also testified, per Fox29, talking about hearing the shots, followed by Wiest screaming as she ran from the house to the sidewalk, where she collapsed, in an apparent attempt to escape her attacker. The final shot, per The Inquirer, was aimed at her head as she lay on the sidewalk.

The jury also saw bodycam footage from the responding officer after police responded to a call, arriving at approximately 12:25 a.m. in the early hours of May 18. They reported finding "a female, later identified as Alyssa Wiest, face down on the sidewalk, with obvious gunshot wounds to her torso," according to a press release from the DA's Office. Wiest was transported to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead.

The release continues, stating that a joint investigation with the West Conshohocken Police and the Montgomery County Detectives found that the door to Wiest's home "was ajar, and there was blood found both inside her residence and along the sidewalk leading to her body" a few doors down.

Investigators recovered five projectiles, per the release, both inside the residence and outside near Wiest's body. It further states that a neighbor reported seeing Dutkiewicz standing by his Ford F-150 truck in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Shortly thereafter, his truck was seen leaving the area.

The suspect ultimately turned himself in around noon of that day, per the DA's office, after his parents contacted police to turn him in. The Inquirer says that he drove to their house after the alleged shooting and stashed Wiest's gun there.

Upon investigating the case, prosecutors argued that detectives uncovered what happened in the immediate aftermath of Wiest breaking up with her boyfriend. They alleged in court that Dutkiewicz immediately went online and began searching how to load and shoot a revolver, per Law&Crime, looking up things like, "How to load and shoot a revolver."

He then proceed to put what he learned to the test, per the prosecutors, by shooting Wiest with her own gun after she'd packed his clothes in a suitcase and told her to leave her home, per the Inquirer.

All in all, they argued that it was approximately 25 minutes after Wiest had broken up with him that Dutkiewicz allegedly shot her multiple times in the torso, leading to her death.

While the case remains ongoing, with more witnesses to come for the prosecution, Dutkiewicz's defense laid out their primary argument in opening statements. They're not attempting to dispute who pulled the trigger that night, but rather the implied motive behind the shooting.

Instead, the defense claims that a night of heavy drinking and high emotions led to the abrupt act of violence, citing that Wiest's blood alcohol level was nearly double the legal limit at the time of her death. They further ague that rather than premeditated intent, the case is more about the emotional turmoil after the abrupt breakup.