Sandra Gayle Fogarty, 71, a White/Caucasian female, died on July 24, 2025, in Hilliard, Florida, after gunfire tore through a home where three generations of one family had gathered. Deputies later identified the other two women killed as her daughters, 32-year-old Marissa Leara Rowell and 33-year-old Alisha Lael Fogarty, drawing a devastating portrait of a mother, a daughter, and a sister lost in a single night. Authorities said the shootings unfolded inside a residence on West 12th Avenue in Nassau County, and the killings were domestic in nature.
As shots rang out, a 5-year-old girl—Marissa’s child—escaped the house and ran to a neighbor for help, her small frame marked by the bloodshed she had just witnessed. Responding deputies found Sandra Gayle Fogarty, 71, female, and the two younger women dead inside. The child’s flight from the home became the first thread in understanding what had happened, and her survival the lone point of light in a scene that investigators described as harrowing.
Investigators named 34-year-old Christopher Bobby Rowell—Marissa’s husband—as the suspect, saying he shot the three women before turning the gun on himself. He was found with a faint pulse and airlifted to a Jacksonville hospital; he died days later from a self-inflicted gunshot, leaving no arrests to be made. Authorities said an SKS-style rifle was used during the attack, adding grim detail to a sequence of shootings that moved room to room inside the home.
In the days that followed, family members spoke of plans interrupted and a future that had been within reach. Relatives said Sandra Gayle Fogarty, 71, female, had just purchased a home in Georgia, and that Marissa was preparing to leave with her daughter to start a new life away from volatility that had shadowed the household. The move, they said, was set to begin that very weekend. Their words sketched a portrait of a family on the cusp of change, halted by violence the night before they were to go.
Neighbors and friends gathered their grief around a fundraiser to help with cremation costs and to support the child who lived through the tragedy. Memorial pages and local reports fixed the date and place of loss for Sandra Gayle Fogarty, 71, female—July 24, 2025, Hilliard, Florida—while the community measured its response in vigils, donations, and quiet promises to care for the survivor.
