A date-night photograph shows special-ed teacher Marisa Galloway and her ex, Zachariah Reed, in romantic bliss – four years before Reed’s mother fatally gunned down Galloway and took her own life amid a bitter custody dispute.
The image – exclusively obtained by The Post from Galloway’s now-scrubbed, private Instagram account – shows the smiling couple on a rooftop overlooking the Empire State Building. It was posted Sept. 3, 2019, along with the caption “Highlights of Summer.”
Just two years later, the pair were engaged in a brutal court battle over custody of their now 4-year-old daughter, Lili.
On July 26, Reed’s mother, Kathleen Leigh, 65 — a terminally ill, retired probation cop from Chicago – fatally shot Galloway, 45, twice before turning the gun on herself on East 88th Street around 9 a.m.
The gruesome scene unfolded as Galloway was putting her other daughter, 1-year-old Mariel, inside her car on the tree-lined street just a half block away from Gracie Mansion. Lili was with Reed, 45, at the time.
The source who provided the happy photo told The Post it was taken before Lili was born.
“It appears she scrubbed her Instagram of photos with him” at some point, the source said. “I remember there being more photos than there are now.”
Kathleen Distro, who lives across the street from Galloway’s parents in Wildwood, NJ, said she has known the family for 51 years and had also heard that the relationship had been contentious.
Although Distro never saw Reed with Galloway on weekend trips to visit her family in her native Wildwood, she said, she believes they started dating around 2018, and called it quits soon before the custody dispute started in August 2021.
Between July 2021 and November, authorities took five domestic incident reports involving the exes, law enforcement sources said.
In two of them, Reed alleged Galloway had been abusing their daughter, claiming at least once that he saw bruises on Lili’s shin, according to law enforcement sources. City children’s services investigators deemed the allegations unfounded, the sources said.
The custody fight is what sent Leigh over the edge, cops believe.
In a seven-page note left “For Police,” Leigh, 65, lamented no one believed her and Reed’s contentions that Galloway abused the child – a claim many of Galloway’s friends and acquaintances have blasted as unthinkable.
“The notion she would abuse a child is absolutely f–king insane. The idea that she would even hurt a child is insane,” said the source.
Lili is now in Reed’s custody as the NYPD continues to investigate the murder-suicide, while Mariel is with Galloway’s parents in New Jersey, according to police sources.
Stephen McSweeney, an attorney for Reed, declined to comment.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore
