Former Probation Officer Kills Her Grandson's Mom, Then Self in Front of 1-Year-Old Near NYC Mayor's Mansion

Just before 9 a.m. Friday, July 26, New York City police officers responded to several 911 calls reporting three shots fired just half a block from Gracie Mansion, where they found two women with gunshot wounds to the head.

A loaded gun lay between the two women, Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press conference just hours after the incident.

Marisa Galloway, 45, was rushed to a nearby Upper East Side hospital, where she succumbed to gunshot wounds to the head and lower back.

Kathleen Leigh, 65, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the NYPD’s preliminary investigation.

Police found Galloway’s 1-year-old child, who was unharmed, inside the mother’s parked white Honda Civic, according to Kenny.

Leigh was the paternal grandmother to Galloway’s 4-year-old child, who was the subject of an ongoing custody dispute between the parents, according to police, who said they had on record five domestic violence reports and two other complaints connected to the family. None of those reports had led to an arrest, Kenny said.

Police have identified the custody battle as the “preliminary motive,” in the case, according to Kenny, who stressed that the investigation into what appeared to be a murder-suicide was still in its early stages. 

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Video surveillance recovered during the preliminary investigation depicts 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 – approaching Galloway as she puts her baby’s stroller in the trunk, according to Kenny.

In the video of the shooting, Leigh fires at Galloway, striking her in the head, then, after the mother falls to the ground, Leigh shoots her again in the back. (Galloway had already placed her baby in the backseat before Leigh began shooting, Kenny said.)

Police recovered two guns that they attributed to Leigh, one near her body and another in her tote bag. 

Kenny said police were investigating if she had obtained the guns while working as a probation officer in Illinois.