The death in Iraq of an Army sergeant from Falmouth has been ruled a homicide and a fellow US soldier faces a military trial, according to the family of the late Sergeant Matthew Gallagher.
The soldier’s mother, Cheryl Ruggiero of Falmouth, said yesterday that an autopsy report sent to the family indicated that Gallagher, 22, died June 26 of a single gunshot wound to the head.
Ruggiero and the soldier’s widow, Katie Gallagher, criticized what they called poor and ambiguous communication from the Army about the circumstances of the sergeant’s death, which the family said occurred in his housing quarters.
“When they came to my home, they didn’t say ‘shot,’ they just said ‘shots were fired,’ ’’ Ruggiero, 53, said of the news of her son’s death. “They also said that he was in a housing unit. I sort of read into it that he was in a housing sweep’’ and had died in combat.
A spokesman for the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas, said yesterday he could not comment on the case.
Defense officials initially said the death occurred from noncombat injuries, which Ruggiero said she heard from the news media and not from the two Army representatives who had visited her home the previous night.
“I would have preferred them to come out and tell me, ‘Listen, this is what happened; this is going to be investigated.’ I’m a strong woman,’’ Ruggiero said.
Katie Gallagher, 23, said she does not remember what the Army officials said to her when they delivered the news. The shock was too great, she said.
“I honestly can’t tell you,’’ she said of that conversation, which occurred the night of her husband’s death. “I was not listening to a word they said.’’
Gallagher, a member of the First Cavalry Division, was on his second deployment to Iraq and had been scheduled to come home on leave three weeks later, his family said.
Katie Gallagher said her husband had given no indication of any problems with fellow soldiers.
“It was totally out of left field. He didn’t say anything,’’ she Gallagher said. “He loved being a soldier, and he was really good at it. He’s the last person in the world to deserve something like this.’’
The family had been told shortly after Gallagher’s death that the Army would investigate, but a lack of additional information and the wait for the autopsy report proved excruciating, Ruggiero said.
Since then, Ruggiero said, “We just sort of kept it to ourselves. We didn’t want to upset the apple cart.’’
Finally, she said, they are speaking about their concerns. The nearly five months since Gallagher’s death have taken their toll, his widow said.
“It’s completely unfair the way that we had to find out. The only hard fact we have now is that it’s a homicide,’’ Katie Gallagher said.
Yesterday, Gallagher was honored during Veterans Day ceremonies in Falmouth. A stone was placed in a memorial walkway that honors the town’s war dead. Ruggiero said the marker for her son was the first to be added since the Vietnam War.
During Gallagher’s funeral in July at the National Cemetery in Bourne, Governor Deval Patrick joined hundreds of other mourners.
“It’s a great honor,’’ Gallagher said of the memorial stone. “Falmouth has made my son their own. They have kept his memory alive.’’
However, Ruggiero said, the time has come for closure and a military trial. “The investigation is complete and it’s time. Let’s do this,’’ she said.
Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarrie@ globe.com.