US president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle paid tribute to Jenny and her colleagues who are credited with saving the lives of some of those injured in the massacre.
PHD student James Holmes has been charged in relation to the shootings which left 12 people dead.
However, her family has now been plunged into a sense of grief of their own. Jenny was out swimming in a lake close to her home when she is believed to have drowned.
Her husband Greg Pinson and five-year-old son Jack are struggling to come to terms with the loss of a “wonderful mother”.
Her mother Brigid, who was unable to fly to Denver for the funeral, added: "I am heartbroken, it is just terrible, terrible. She was such a wonderful person who was just so full of life and a wonderful mother who loved Jack so much," she said.
"I will miss her so much. Her brothers and sisters went over for the funeral and we had a little mass for her here. She could light up a room when she walked into it."
Jenny studied to be a nurse in Denver in the nineties and decided to settle there.
She was a GAA fanatic and founded the Denver Gaels ladies football club.
The club posted an emotional tribute on its website, describing Jenny as a "loving and devoted mother" and a "proud Meath woman".
"Every team has its ups and downs, its wins and losses ... the Pinson and Gallagher families, the Gaels and our Irish community suffered a great loss. Jennifer Gallagher passed on, leaving a wake of sorrow, sadness and loving memories.
"When you met Jenny she brightened up your day and wanted to know how you were doing. Others always came first in the most natural and sincere way.
"In her vocation as a nurse, she cared for those with most acute needs in the burn unit, the ER and most recently was recognized for her work with the Aurora shooting victims by President Obama. We were all very proud of her"
A special memorial mass is due to take place in Duleek on August 26.
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Black ice cream truck driver facing rape charges after kidnaping 14-yr-old girl
An ice cream truck driver is facing rape charges following a reported abduction Thursday night. Garner police said 39-year-old Omar Kareem Sellers was selling ice cream around 9 p.m. near the Avery Square Apartments when he started talking to a group of kids, including a 14-year-old girl. Witnesses told police that the girl voluntarily got into Seller's white ice cream truck and left the area. Police issued an Amber Alert for the 14 year old, but canceled it a short time later after an officer spotted the truck near Creech Road Elementary School. Sellers was charged with one count of indecent liberties with a child, two counts of statutory rape/sex offense and one count of first-degree kidnapping.
Baxter Tisdale – a one-time candidate for Rock Hill mayor and City Councilman – was arrested Tuesday after police say DNA implicated him in a 1986 Florida rape case. York County drug agents arrested Tisdale, 49, at his Walnut Street home after learning from the Miami-Dade Police Department that his DNA was a match for evidence connected to a burglary and rape that officials had been unable to solve for more than two decades. Florida authorities told Brown they believe Tisdale broke into a Miami woman’s home and held a knife to her throat while he raped her. The woman’s preteen child witnessed the assault.
After years of investigating, officials found bodily fluids from the suspect that matched DNA Miami-Dade officials already had on file from another rape police charged Tisdale with in 2009.
In May 2009, Tisdale was arrested as a fugitive from justice and extradited to Miami after police said he raped another woman in 1986 in the same area under similar circumstances. That case was dismissed, Brown said, because the victim declined to testify against Tisdale.
Tisdale, a Miami native who moved to Rock Hill in 1993, told officers when he was arrested that the rape charge had been dismissed after he was charged in May 2009, Brown said.
“The rape he’s now charged on is different,” Brown said.
‘Good man’ with a record
Virginia Tisdale said Wednesday her husband did not commit the rape.
“Of course, he’s innocent,” she said, declining to comment further.
“He’s a very good man,” said the Rev. C.T. Kirk, pastor of Rock Hill’s Sanctuary of Life Outreach Center and Tisdale’s cousin. “He’d always greet you with a smile.
Kirk said he met Tisdale just six years ago while Kirk was working with Mayor Doug Echols’ re-election campaign. They recognized each other from their letters to the editor published in The Herald, Kirk said.
Tisdale never mentioned the rape and burglary in Florida, Kirk said, and hearing about the details of the case left the pastor “shocked.”
Kirk said he knows Tisdale has a criminal record, but he said his cousin has “definitely grown up... more than what the public record would say.”
According to the State Law Enforcement Division, Tisdale has been convicted of more than 10 crimes – many of them misdemeanors – while living in Rock Hill.
In 1994, he was charged with petty larceny, breach of trust with fraudulent intent, driving under suspension, driving without a license, driving without insurance and receiving money by false pretenses.
A year later, he was charged again with driving under suspension.
A year after that, city officials identified at least three known addresses where Tisdale had illegally turned on electricity service from 1994 to 1996.
In 2005, he was sentenced to five years probation after a conviction for a violent burglary. SLED lists “ ‘Three Gun’ Tisdale” as an alias he once used.
Futile political career
In 1999, Tisdale ran for the Ward 1 seat on the Rock Hill City Council. He said his struggles with the law and poverty made him the most qualified candidate.
“I’ve been through a lot of things since then,” Tisdale said in a Sept. 4, 1999, story published in The Herald, referring to a 1996 conviction for stealing electricity from the city of Rock Hill – a crime he publicly confessed to before police asked him about it.
He owed the city between $400 to $500 but still announced plans to start a nonprofit group called the Magic Foundation to aid the city’s poor.
Tisdale lost that 1999 race to longtime incumbent Councilman Winston Searles – receiving only nine votes.
The next year, Tisdale, announced his decision to run as a Republican against state Rep. Bessie Moody-Lawrence, D-Rock Hill, for the District 49 seat. His 18-year-old son served as his campaign manager.
Six days later, Tisdale withdrew from the House race when he realized that he didn’t live in District 49.
Also in 2000, he publicly opposed the NAACP when the group demonstrated against the Confederate flag flying atop the Statehouse dome in Columbia.
A year later, he ran unsuccessfully for mayor against Echols.
Since then, Tisdale has made his political opinions known in numerous letters he wrote to editors of The Herald.
In an August 2008 letter, he introduced his idea for a fourth political party – the “Tisdaleian party,” he called it – that would adopt a “no work, no eat” philosophy, combat abortion and mandate a “death week” in place of the years convicted murderers stay on death row.
Suing police, jails
In February 2011, a month after his release after the first rape charge was dropped, Tisdale sued a Miami-Dade police officer and prosecutors, claiming the officer chose his photo from a lineup for the rape victim after she failed to positively identify her attacker.
His federal lawsuit sought $50 million in punitive damages and $5 million for his false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, mental anguish and defamation.
The lawsuit was dismissed in June 2011 when Tisdale failed to serve the complaint in compliance with federal regulations.
In another lawsuit filed this year, Tisdale alleges that while housed at the Miami Dade County Jail for processing following his May 2009 arrest, he was injured in a holding cell after he was pushed against a concrete bench. While serving time in Miami’s Metro West Detention Center, he claimed that he submitted “numerous sick call slips requesting medical attention,” but they were all denied.
“My request went without a response” for more than a month, Tisdale claims in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit further alleges that on June 23, 2009, Tisdale requested treatment for “my medical condition,” but three days later a prison counselor rejected his request.
The suit goes on to say Tisdale submitted claims several months later, all of which were denied or ignored. As a result of the prolonged back injury he suffered in 2009, Tisdale said he has become disabled.
Tisdale requested $5 million in punitive damages. That lawsuit is still pending.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A twice-convicted felon has been linked by his DNA to a disturbing 2010 attempted rape that rattled the residents of several Staten Island communities.
On Wednesday, police unsealed an indictment against Alexis Rodriguez, 28, alleging that he grabbed a 22-year-old domestic worker as she walked to work near Four Corners and North Entry roads in Dongan Hills and tried to rape her at knifepoint.
A week after the 2010 attack, police released a sketch of the suspect, handing it out to parents as they drove their children to school at nearby Staten Island Academy.
The attacker left DNA behind on the victim's clothing, though, and police were able to link it to Rodriguez, who’s serving a two-and-a-half to five-year prison term following a June 2011 burglary conviction. The conviction stemmed from a May 2011 arrest that had elements of sexual abuse, NYPD sources said.
After the 2011 burglary conviction, a sample of Rodriguez’s DNA was entered into a police database, sources said.
On the strength of that evidence, he was indicted Wednesday on charges of first-degree attempted rape, second-degree attempted kidnapping and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
The attack happened about 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 12, 2010. Police said the suspect had grabbed the woman from behind, covered her mouth so she could not scream, brandished a knife and told her in Spanish to be quiet.
He then tried to pull her into a secluded wooded area, but she managed to break free, police said.
She flagged down a passing car, whose driver gave her a ride to a safe place, where she contacted police. She refused medical attention, and police said the suspect took none of her property.
At the time, residents of Todt Hill and Dongan Hills in the area above Richmond Road were already on edge following the so-called “Ninja Burglar” pattern of house break-ins in 2007 and a similar chain of burglaries in 2009.
Staten Island Academy administrators placed the school on a “heightened” security alert, and a security patrol hired by the Iron Hills Civic Association also kept a close watch for the suspect.
Dr. Mohammad Khalid, the association’s president, praised police Wednesday night, and said the neighborhood would breathe easier now that the mystery of the attack has been solved.
“Hopefully, other people who were thinking about doing something like this will take a lesson from it, that they cannot run away. They will get caught and they will get punished,” he said.
In addition to the burglary conviction, Rodriguez also served roughly two and a half years behind bars for a 2006 attempted robbery and criminal weapon possession conviction, court records show.
Rodriguez pleaded not guilty at arraignment Wednesday. His lawyer, Manuel Ortega, declined comment.
