Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993 TAG: 9307030125
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At first, police found no indication of violence in the death of Pamela Susan Gallagher, 38, of Laburnum Drive Southwest.
But an autopsy earlier this week showed she died from a deep injury to her neck that was inconsistent with an accident.
Police interviewed neighbors who said Gallagher argued with a man on the afternoon of June 23. The man confronted her as she sat in her car outside the apartment she rented in the quiet, mostly-single family neighborhood. She drove off and left the man standing.
She was found dead two days later by a neighbor who spotted her decomposed body in her apartment. The neighbor had noticed Gallagher was not collecting her mail.
The neighbor walked to the door of her apartment and found it open. When police arrived, they found Gallagher lying on her back on a bedroom floor.
Her purse was intact and her apartment appeared to be neat and well-kept. But her bedroom was in disarray, with an iron on the floor and a lamp overturned.
After receiving a report on the autopsy from the medical examiner, police are treating the death as a homicide.
"It's the most heartbreaking thing that's happened to our family," said her mother, Geraldine, who lives in Roanoke. "It just tears you apart."
Geraldine Gallagher remembered her daughter as an emotionally distraught young woman, who had pushed away many of her friends and lived in virtual solitude following a failed marriage.
"She wasn't happy with herself or her jobs," Geraldine Gallagher said. "We thought she had given up and committed suicide."
Pamela Gallagher's unhappiness led her mother to attend mental health meetings in search for an answer to the problems that plagued her daughter.
She learned of her daughter's death just an hour after returning home from a church field trip.
It was in God that her daughter found her only relief.
"She was a good Christian," Geraldine Gallagher said. "She was real close to the Lord. She felt he was the only friend she had."
Keywords:
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by CNB