UPDATE – Ashley Gallagher has been found not guilty.
“I cannot find beyond doubt that those threats were made and therefore Ms. Gallagher must be acquitted,” said the judge in handing down his verdict.
Gallagher leaves the courthouse with a big sigh of relief.
“It’s been almost 2 years now, I’m just glad it is over and I can move on,” she says.
PENTICTON – A Supreme Court judge will decide if a Princeton woman made a threat to burn her then-boyfriend’s belongings and carried it out with much more serious consequences.
Ashley Patricia Gallagher is charged with six arson related offenses after three Princeton homes burned to the ground in the spring of 2014.
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Robert Cormack told the court Gallagher, after the two had argued, threatened to burn his snowmobile earlier on the night of the fire.
The defence lawyer challenged the testimony.
“If she had made those threats, Cormack or his friend would be calling police to say she’s going to start a fire,” said Don Campbell. “The fact that that didn’t happen casts a significant shadow over that important evidence.”
Prior to the fire, Gallagher had driven to Cormack’s parents’ home in Tulameen to try to convince Cormack to return with her to their Princeton home.
“She had come to my parents, pounding on the door demanding to talk to me, and I didn’t feel comfortable talking to her so I stayed inside,” testified Cormack.
The prosecutor argued it was the extremely distraught situation that motivated Gallagher to allegedly carry out her threat.
The fire started in the shed of the home but there’s no evidence the snowmobile was the first item to go up in flames.
There’s also no forensic evidence indicating Gallagher started the fire and no eyewitnesses saw her in the area at the time.
The court heard how Cormack’s friend called police notifying them that Gallagher had been drinking and driving. Gallagher said this prompted her to leave Princeton and drive her mother’s Vavenby home which is more than five hours away.
“It flies in the face of common sense to say that all of those things are coincidental and Ashley Gallagher didn’t do it,” asserted Crown Counsel John Swanson. “You’ve got the timing, the location and the methodology which was destruction by fire. She was emotional at that time and you’ve got the fact she fled the scene.”
The judge is expected to deliver his verdict Friday afternoon.
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