By Police1 Staff
BOSTON — A woman whose father was killed in a gunfight when she was five years old finds solace in knowing the officer fought back against his attacker.
“As a child,” Anne Gallagher said, “I didn’t get the permanence of death. For a long time afterward, I used to wait at the top of our street for my father to come home. Even then, it was never clear to me what happened to him.”
With the help of relatives and helpful departmental personnel to whom she will be forever grateful, Gallagher pored over ballistics and autopsy reports, court transcripts and call logs and pieced it all together.
The day he died in May 1962, Boston police officer and former Marine John J. Gallagher had just arrived with his partner at a bank to investigate an alarm, according to The Boston Herald.
Gallagher began checking doors and came upon a Charles Tracey, waiting inside a supply closet with a loaded gun he’d found inside the building. A gunfight ensued at point-blank range, and of the bullets that hit Gallagher, one ripped through his torso and stomach, killing him.
“It wasn’t until 30 years later I learned my father actually shot back. And that in losing his own life, he helped save a few others that night,” Gallagher said.