One of two men charged in connection with the fatal shooting of a woman inside her Smith Township, Pa., home in June said he and his accomplice were looking to rob her when the home invasion turned deadly.

Shackled and wearing an orange jumpsuit during a preliminary hearing Monday, Walter Lee Winland testified against his co-defendant, Michael Pyles, blaming him for shooting and killing 37-year-old Renee Lynn Gill while robbing her.

Winland said he used to date Gill and they were still friends, but he planned to rob her of drugs and money when he asked Alexis Podlasiak to drive him to the home at 132 Eleanor St. in the village of Langeloth. But Podlasiak then got her boyfriend Pyles involved, and the two men began planning the robbery, Winland said.

“I was going to act like I was buying (drugs) there and then steal them,” Winland said.

“I didn’t want anyone to get hurt,” he added.

The trio traveled from West Virginia after Pyles retrieved a handgun from his father’s Moundsville home, and they drove to Washington County on June 15, although no one was at Gill’s house when they arrived, Winland said. They came back later in the night and entered through an unlocked door in the basement in the early hours of June 16.

Winland testified that while inside the house, Pyles struck Gill in the face with his handgun and they were soon confronted by the woman’s 21-year-old son, Ronald Brown, who heard his mother’s cries for help.

“They were tussling,” Winland said of Pyles and Brown. “That’s when I heard the gun go off.”

Brown was shot once in his hand and fell to the floor. Winland said Gill then tried to defend herself when she was fatally shot.

Pyles, 38, of New Martinsville is charged with homicide, conspiracy, attempted homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, trespassing and burglary. After listening to testimony, District Judge Gary Havelka ordered Pyles to stand trial on all charges.

Winland, 38, of Canonsburg, was arrested in Wheeling on June 20 and was found with 61 packets with the same “BitCoin” markings on the drugs that had been at Gill’s house. Winland agreed to waive his preliminary hearing Monday and is cooperating with investigators.

Both men are jailed without bond. Podlasiak has not been charged and she did not testify at Monday’s preliminary hearing.