A retired Chicago parole officer shot and killed her former daughter-in-law and then herself on a quiet street on New York's Upper East Side while a baby sat in the back seat of a car nearby.
The shocking murder and suicide was the result of a bitter custody dispute between shooter Kathleen Leigh (65) and victim Marisa Galloway (45), said Joe Kenny, chief of the NYPD's Criminal Investigation Division.
As the New York Post reported, the feud stemmed from a long series of domestic incidents that ultimately led to East 88th Street, just one block from Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the New York mayor.
There, police said, Leigh shot Ms Galloway twice immediately after her former daughter-in-law loaded a baby into a parked car at about 9 a.m. local time on Friday.
Leigh then shot himself, fell to the sidewalk and dropped a loaded gun between himself and Ms Galloway, he said.
“Both had suffered gunshot wounds to the head,” he said.
Ms. Galloway's one-year-old daughter, who is not related to Leigh, was in the back seat of a nearby car but was unharmed in the shooting, Kenny said.
Leigh, a retired parole officer, moved to New York from Chicago three years ago, Kenny said.
She was the grandmother of Ms Galloway's four-year-old son, he said. The boy was at the centre of a bitter custody battle between Ms Galloway, Leigh and Leigh's son.
During the dispute, NYPD officers took five reports of domestic disturbances and two complaints, but no arrests were made in any of the incidents, Kenny said.
The argument appeared to have escalated on Friday morning when Ms Galloway put her other child – the one-year-old girl – in a car.
“She is just putting the stroller in the trunk when Ms. Leigh comes up to her and shoots her in the head and then, as she is on the ground, in the back,” Kenny said, describing the surveillance footage.
The three shots shattered the calm of an otherwise quiet, tree-lined block, just a stone's throw from the New York mayor's office.
“I heard screaming and then gunshots. I jumped in the doorway to get cover,” a witness told The Post as sirens blared around him.
“And then I looked over and saw the woman with the white hair fall to the sidewalk. I thought maybe something had happened down at Gracie Mansion and she had been hit by a ricochet,” he continued.
“As I got closer, I saw that there was another woman lying behind the car who had also been shot.”
Another witness, who identified himself as Mr. Ridriguez, said he had been driving to work just minutes earlier and heard gunshots. He and others notified police at Gracie Mansion of the shooting, he said.
“It's very sad,” he said. “It's a very nice area, very quiet, the police are nearby.”
“I have never experienced anything like this before and I have been working here for three years now.”
Police found Ms. Galloway, covered in blood but still breathing, slumped near the back of the car, witnesses and sources said. Leigh was lying on the pavement with a gunshot wound to the head, Kenny said.
Paramedics pronounced Leigh dead at the scene and took Ms. Galloway to Weill Cornell Medical Center, where doctors pronounced her dead on arrival, Kenny said.
Two weapons were found near Leigh: a loaded 9mm Glock pistol on the sidewalk next to her and another firearm in a shopping bag she was carrying, Kenny said.
He said police would investigate whether the weapons were retired from Leigh's time as a probation officer.
“These firearms have no significant history here in New York City,” he said. “They are not reported stolen. That will be part of our investigation.”
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and has been republished with permission
