Jennifer Gallagher, a nurse who cared for the Aurora shooting victims at the University of Colorado Hospital last month, has drowned while swimming at night in West Okoboji Lake in Iowa on August 6.
Gallagher, 46, was found by a family member under a dock the day after she left to go swimming and was pronounced dead at the scene, according to The Huffington Post .
For a community already in mourning after losing 12 people in a horrific massacre last month, Gallagher’s death is yet another blow. Her husband, Greg, stated that Jennifer was one of the nurses who met with President Obama when he visited on July 22.
She had worked at the University of Colorado Hospital for 13 years and helped open the hospital’s neurological intensive care unit. Greg Pinson stated of his wife:
“She worked the morning after the Batman massacre in a very busy unit of the hospital – so she saw everything really, some really bad injuries.”
The Los Angeles Times reports that Chief Nursing Officer Carolyn Sanders spoke of Jennifer Gallagher, saying:
“Jenny was a beloved nurse. She was very well known for her ability to connect with people, show empathy and develop caring relationships with her patients.”
Gallagher helped to care for some of the most critically injured patients of the Dark Knight Rises massacre in Aurora, Colorado last month including Caleb Medley, who was shot in the eye by the gunman, leaving him in critical condition ever since, reports CBS News .
Medley, whose pregnant wife was also in the theater during the July 20 shooting, was in a coma when his wife gave birth to their baby in the same hospital, just four days after the shooting. Greg Pinson said that his wife was “very affected by that, the fact that his life was so dramatically altered and a newborn baby arriving almost at the exact same time.”
Jennifer Gallagher and Greg Pinson were married seven years ago and have a five-year-old son together.
