Allegations against William Galloway in 2016 double homicide brought by inmate and former friend
Contributed By:The 411 News
The “red store” on East 49th Avenue and Georgia is closed now. On October 13, 2016, Gary Police found the bodies of two teenagers, Zantrell Collins and Koreena Ramos in the store’s parking lot. Both were 18 years old and had been shot multiple times.
On April 7th, the county prosecutor filed a probable cause charge in the teens’ deaths against William Dejuan Antonio Galloway, age 27.
The document provided some of the findings from the police investigation. It began with the owners of Family Discount Foods, at 717 East 49th Ave, discovering the bodies in a parked car on their lot when they were closing for the night. Because of its red facade, some neighborhood residents call it the “red store.”
It is a story of detective work connecting the dots, where sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.
According to the document, the victims – Collins and his girlfriend Ramos – were no angels; they had a reputation of robbing people.
Early in the investigation, detectives received leads pointing to Galloway.
There was the rabbit hole of false leads taking detectives back to square one. Informants said they knew the suspect but couldn’t identify him in a lineup. There was the witness who said he had seen the suspect at the “red store” the night of October 13, but that proved unreliable. When the suspect was shown in a lineup, the witness couldn’t identify him.
Detectives learned of a claim by a possible witness that Galloway was involved in the “red store” murders. Turned out that witness had a gripe: You didn’t treat me fairly one time and I’m not telling you anything.
In November 2016, a month after the double homicide, Galloway and Nicholas Pelissier were involved in a November 12 shooting near a gas station on 49th & Broadway in Gary. Both faced charges in the murder of Jonquell Golida and the attempted murder of Timothy Fryerson, who was with Golida.
Galloway and Pelissier asked for separate trials. Galloway got a pre-trial release and was sent home on an ankle bracelet in December 2017. According to a report of Pelissier’s trial in the NWI Times, Fryerson named Galloway as the shooter. Pelissier was sentenced in February 2018 to 85 years in prison.
Trial delays and postponements throughout 2018 and much of 2019 kept Galloway out of court until September 2019 when new charges were brought against him for four counts of attempted murder and escape from home detention.
The U.S. Marshals arrested Galloway in November 2019, returning him to the Lake County Jail.
The April 7th charging document says Pelissier had come forward to name Galloway in the homicides of Collins and Ramos. On March 31, a detective made contact with Pelissier at the Wabash Valley Correctional Center in New Carlisle, Indiana.
Pelissier told the detective he was with Galloway the night of October 13 when Collins and Ramos died. The document states, “Nicholas advised that he observed Galloway shoot inside the vehicle several times. Nicholas stated that Galloway stopped shooting for a moment, wiped his face, looked inside the vehicle, and began shooting inside the vehicle again.”
Pelissier told detectives he was willing to cooperate in hopes of getting a reduced sentence.
