Just before 9 a.m. on Friday, July 26, several 911 calls said three shots had been fired about a half block from Gracie Mansion. When police arrived, they found two women who had been shot in the head.
Police Chief Joseph Kenny said at a press meeting just hours after the crime that there was a loaded gun between the two women.
Dr. Marisa Galloway, 45, was taken to a nearby Upper East Side hospital but died there after being shot in the head and lower back.
The early results of the NYPD’s investigation show that Kathleen Leigh, 65, killed herself with a gun and was declared dead at the scene. Kenny says that police found Galloway’s sick but unhurt 1-year-old child in her parked white Honda Civic.
Police said they had five reports of domestic abuse and two other complaints about the family involving Leigh, who was the paternal grandmother of Galloway’s 4-year-old child. The child’s parents were still fighting over custody, according to the police. Keenan said that none of those reports had led to anyone being arrested.
According to Kenny, the custody fight was the “preliminary motive” in the case. He also stressed that the investigation into what seemed to be a murder-suicide was still in its early stages.
Kenny says that video surveillance found during the preliminary investigation shows Leigh, a retired Cook County probation officer from Chicago, Ill., who had been living with family in New York City for the past three years, walking up to Galloway as she puts her baby’s stroller in the trunk.
The video shows that Leigh shoots Galloway and hits her in the head. After the mother falls to the ground, Leigh shoots her again in the back. Kenny said that Glasley had already put her baby in the back seat before Leigh started filming.
One gun was found near Leigh’s body, and the other was in her tote bag. The police believe these guns belong to her.
Kenny said that the cops were looking into whether she got the guns while she was working in Illinois as a probation officer.