Questions and frustration linger following last week’s late-night death of a Glens Falls resident.
Several dozen people gathered outside Glens Falls city hall Friday to voice their anger over what they view as a lack of transparency and appropriate response from city police and officials before and after Michelle McFarren’s death.
The 43-year-old city resident was found in a burning clothing donation bin in the Talk of the Town restaurant’s parking lot in the early morning of March 6th. Since then, her friends and family have been looking for answers and accountability.
Kimberly Ouderkerk was leading chants Friday afternoon.
“She was always free-spirited, happy-go-lucky, willing to help anybody, she was a good person,” said Ouderkerk.
An initial autopsy found her death was “fire-related.”
An emergency dispatch clip published by WNYT only raised more questions.
“It’s Michelle McFarren, she stated there’s a group of men coming to cause bodily harm to her. She keeps reiterating that she’s stuck inside the blue box at Tennybrook.”
Ouderkerk claims McFarren was ignored.
“We feel that they didn’t answer her calls. They just pushed it aside. She was a bother to them,” said Ouderkerk.
Ouderkerk says the demonstration also aimed to center McFarren’s life.
“We want people to know that she wasn’t ‘a homeless person in a blue bin.’ They put out there she was an addict, she was a mental heatlh patient, one less person to take care of. There were so many comments, Michelle had a home,” said Ouderkerk. “Michelle had a loving family. Did Michelle have some problems? None of us can answer that. We may all have problems that nobody knows. We just want justice, we want answers for her children, what happened? Who did it? Are they in our community still? The first thing I read was there’s no more threat to our community, how do they know that?”
Daughter Harley McFarren was overwhelmed by the support shown to her and her mother.
“It means the whole world to me that people care enough to come and do all this for her. I feel like she really would’ve wanted it,” said McFarren.
An initial statement from Mayor Bill Collins suggested McFarren may have sought refuge in the donation bin on a “cold and rainy night.”
McFarren’s friends and family have since pushed back on the narrative that she was homeless at the time of her death. Some rally attendees said she always had a couch to crash on in their homes.
Destini Brown said McFarren had supported her when she was dealing with homelessness years ago.
“It is amazing that our community can come together for this because there is a lot of violence out in the world and there is a lot of negativity out in the world and I’m glad that her friends and family can come out here and support her when she can’t have her voice—we are her voice for her. And we will get justice for her no matter what,” said Brown.
Democratic Fourth Ward Councilor Ben Lapham was at the demonstration. He says he’s dedicated to improving the city’s response on McFarren’s death.
“And I feel like that is a big frustration factor for a lot of the people here is that they expect police to protect and serve and they don’t feel like Michelle was protected and that justice has not ben served,” said Lapham.
City police say an investigation into McFarren’s death is ongoing with help from the New York State Police Forensics Unit and New York State Fire investigators. They ask anyone with any information about any aspect of the incident to call city police.