Maine (WABI) – The Maine Marine Patrol recovered the body of an unidentified man from Casco Bay Friday morning.

Marine Patrol was notified by the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office of a body in the water approximately 100 yards from the end of Indian Point Road on Chebeague Island.

According to Marine Patrol, the body was discovered by a recreational fisherman who notified authorities.

The body will be taken to the Office of Medical Examiner in Augusta for confirmation of identification.

Copyright 2024 WABI. All rights reserved.

A man has been arrested for murder after a person was found dead outside a home in Gardiner, Maine, on Friday.

Gardiner police were called to 16 Bartlett Street around 3:41 p.m. for a welfare check that was called in by a family member. Responding officers found the body of a deceased male outside of the home, according to a news release from the Maine Department of Public Safety.

A death investigation got underway as the Maine State Police major crimes unit central and the evidence recovery team responded and worked until the early morning hours of Saturday.

An autopsy was conducted Saturday and the victim’s cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma. His manner of death was ruled a homicide, officials said. His identity is being withheld until further testing can be conducted for positive identification.

Detectives arrested 52-year-old Gregory Fisher, of South Gardiner, and he was taken to the Kennebec County Jail, officials said. He’s expected to make his first court appearance early next week on the murder charge. It was not immediately clear if he had obtained an attorney.

Police haven’t said what led them to Fisher, or provided a possible motive in this case.

An investigation is ongoing, and further information will be released when it becomes available.

Gratitude was in the heart of Colleen Walsh-Irwin as she and her extended family gathered in Bath, Maine, to witness the christening Saturday of the USS Patrick Gallagher, a Navy warship named after her uncle, a decorated U.S. Marine who lived on Long Island.

“It’s such a great honor and tribute to my uncle, who sacrificed so much for the United States, and he wasn’t a U.S. citizen,” Walsh-Irwin, 58, of East Northport, said of her uncle, Lance Cpl. Patrick “Bob” Gallagher. She spoke by phone from Maine a day before the christening of the ship, a DDG 127 guided-missile destroyer.

“It just makes us feel so grateful,” Walsh-Irwin said, referring to the family who traveled from Ireland and Long Island to Maine for the ceremony. “We’re grateful to the Navy and Bath Iron Works for building the ship, and all the people involved in making this dream come true. There were so many behind the scenes for years to make this happen.”

Gallagher was an Irish immigrant — from Ballyhaunis, County Mayo — who had settled in Lynbrook in 1962, joining an older sister, Walsh-Irwin’s mother, Margaret Gallagher Walsh, now deceased. She was the eldest of nine siblings and Gallagher was the second eldest.

Walsh-Irwin said when her mother was a young child, she couldn’t pronounce his name and called him Bob. She said the family called him “Uncle Bob.”

After he enlisted in the Marine Corps and was called to go to Vietnam, he had the choice to go back to his home country. Instead, said his family and others, he chose to serve.

Gallagher, who served in a gunnery unit, was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions during a 1966 enemy grenade attack that nearly killed three of his comrades in a foxhole near Cam Lo, in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. He kicked away one grenade, then cradled another to his belly before throwing it into a nearby river.

His Navy Cross citation lauded Gallagher for displaying “valor in the face of almost certain death,” Newsday reported in a 2017 article about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s letter to then-Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, urging the Navy to recognize Gallagher posthumously by naming a ship after him.

But within a month of receiving his citation from Gen. William Westmoreland, in 1967, Gallagher was dead at the age of 23. He was just days from going home when he was killed in another enemy attack.

Schumer (D-N.Y.) said of Gallagher: “He was not a citizen, but Patrick was called to serve,” adding that he could’ve gone back to Ireland to avoid service in Vietnam, but didn’t.

“It’s the story of the Irish,” said Schumer. “It’s the story of immigrants. It’s the story of the greatness of America, and the attachment that immigrants for generations have had for serving here, in this case, Irish immigrants for serving our country with valor and loving America’s freedom and willing to die for it.”

Patrick Nealon, commander of VFW Post 2307 in Lynbrook, is among family and supporters who are in Maine for the ship christening. He said Gallagher “could’ve walked away” from serving in Vietnam. 

“He said, ‘No. this is my new country. This, I will defend’ … and he went.”

Nealon was among those who sought to get Gallagher recognition. There was a petition drive that several years ago had garnered about 10,000 names. There was also support in Gallagher’s home country. The Dublin Airport commemorated Gallagher’s exploits in 2015 in a series of billboards displayed in its departures area for flights to the United States. And his home village commemorated the 50th anniversary of his death.

Nealon, who is Irish, said of the ship named for Gallagher: “It’s a real proud moment, for all of Ireland and every Irish American in the United States.”