RSSFriends Eulogize UVM College Student Michelle Gardner-Quinn
Friends, family and fellow UVM college students packed UVM’s Ira Allen Chapel in Burlington, VT to 
eulogize 21 year old Michelle Gardner-Quinn. A sad conclusion to yet another crime in a college campus setting.
With her parents, sister and brother sitting in the front row Sunday, the Rev. Sue Marie Baskette, a campus minister, spoke of Gardner-Quinn’s love of nature.
“We are angry and wanting to shout and scream at the top of our lungs. Why? Why, God, why? Yet there is no answer, only the stinging reminder of our frail existence here on earth,” Baskette said. (WCBS-TV)
Michelle Gardner-Quinn Remembered
Hundreds gathered at UVM’s Ira Allen Chapel Sunday night to share their memories of Michelle Gardner-Quinn, and to celebrate the life of the student who loved music, nature, and yoga.
UVM’s Campus Minister, Rev. Sue Marie Baskette, presided over the memorial service. “In the time Michelle was in Burlington, she made many, many friends,” said Rev. Baskette. (WCAX News 3)
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20 Responses to “Friends Eulogize UVM College Student Michelle Gardner-Quinn”
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God has given eternal peace to Michelle; and I pray that her family and friends will find that peace and comfort in their prayers to God.
The suspect is to appear in court today on unrelated charges. He’s being held without bail, but so far has not been charged in Michelle’s case. But this recent article has some additional info:
Autopsy performed on Vt. college senior
Associated Press
Oct 14, 2006
BURLINGTON, Vt. – A man authorities are investigating in the case of a University of Vermont senior who was found dead along a ravine was being held without bail on unrelated charges Saturday while an autopsy was performed on the victim.
Brian L. Rooney, a construction worker from Richmond with a record of several arrests, was taken into custody Friday, the same day hikers happened upon the body of Michelle Gardner-Quinn near Huntington Gorge, a popular swimming hole.
Gardner-Quinn had disappeared nearly a week earlier while walking to her dormitory.
The cause of her death had not been released. The autopsy was ongoing Saturday but results would not be released this weekend, said police Lt. Kathleen Stubbing. She said it would likely be at least a week before any charges can be brought in the case.
Meanwhile, a memorial service for Gardner-Quinn was scheduled for Sunday night at the University of Vermont in Burlington.
Rooney, 36, was arrested Friday on unrelated charges of sex abuse elsewhere in Vermont. He was jailed without bail on those charges Saturday, pending a Monday arraignment. He had not been charged in Gardner-Quinn’s case, but is considered the prime suspect in her disappearance and death, Police Chief Thomas Tremblay said.
Gardner-Quinn, 21, of Arlington, Va., was last seen alive in the early morning of Oct. 7 as she walked up Main Street after celebrating a friend’s birthday at downtown bars.
Authorities said that in a chance encounter she asked Rooney to borrow his cell phone to make a call because the battery in hers had gone dead. She made the call and was seen, on surveillance video from a jewelry store camera, walking alongside Rooney.
Gardner-Quinn was reported missing later that day when she failed to make a dinner date with her parents.
Because of the surveillance video, Rooney had been the focus of the investigation.
Days later, Rooney was seen with cuts on his hands when he stopped at Walt’s Game Room, a candy store and pool parlor in Winooski, where he was a regular customer, owner John Barton said Saturday. It was either Monday or Wednesday, Barton said.
“He looked very down and depressed,” said Barton, who asked Rooney about police activity at the house where he was staying.
“I asked him what the deal was with the FBI and police and everything going around. He said he was the guy who had lent the missing girl his cell phone,” Barton said. “He basically said `I was walking up the street with her and when I got halfway up she went one way and I went the other and I don’t remember anything after that.’”
Barton said he noticed two or three cuts on Rooney’s right hand but thought they may have been suffered on the job because they were scabbed over.
A woman who lives upstairs from the Winooski apartment where Rooney was staying said Saturday he came home drunk late Wednesday and told her he did something wrong with “the girl from the college.”
“He came up and he was drunk, crazy,” said Amy Stewart, 25.
“He said he did something wrong with that girl. That’s all I know. I say `Tell me more, tell me what’s going on,’ and he said he not going to tell me anymore,” she said.
Rooney was charged with sexual assault in Caledonia County, 80 miles north of Burlington, and with lewd and lascivious conduct with a child in neighboring Essex county, where he previously lived, authorities said.
His stepfather said Saturday he doesn’t believe Rooney was involved in Gardner-Quinn’s disappearance.
“We’ve got all the faith in the world in him,” said Ronald Skinner, whose Richmond home was searched Tuesday as part of the investigation.
According to court records and interviews, Rooney has had minor scrapes with the law. He had been arrested several times for driving without a license and once for disorderly conduct. He has also had arrests for leaving the scene of an accident and burglary, according to Caledonia County State’s Attorney Bob Butterfield, who did not know the ultimate disposition of those charges Saturday.
Richard…you and Miss Underestimated have the best comments! Why in God’s name do the courts ignorantly continue to let violent sexual offenders run loose? If overcrowding of our prisons is an issue, I think that excuse is bogus. Why should anyone care if those who disregard the law and/or take a life are a bit uncomfortable? I think dying was uncomforable for young Michelle…..
Brenda
Yes, the Courts need to stop with the love all serve all attitude of these sexual predators.
Also, although young women have every RIGHT to walk alone – they need to know that sexual predators don’t care about the rights of anyone else,they just want to feed their own addiction/sickness.
Please women every where…. please start looking out after each other’s backs! Never allow your friends to go it alone… it’s a sad, but true fact even though we have the right to walk alone, we can’t.
Let me add that I in no way think that Michelle did anything wrong, and my heart breaks for her friends and family…
I just want women to be more careful and more protective of each other.
Girls and women need to be aware that they are targets of pervs that our judges have decided are no threat to society.
With cell phones women have a false sense of security, women and girls need to travel in groups.
I still contend that our school systems should provide self defense classes for our children. We do the stranger danger, but we need to protect our children by giving them the tools they need and it’s not a cell phone, it’s self defense.
Walking home, traveling or shopping alone is no longer safe for anyone, anywhere.
My prayers are with Michelles family, may God give you strength .
Ms. Red,
You are correct. I grew up in Tampa and there are places I would NOT go for my safety. Now, I live in the mountains of Virginia and there are places I still do not go for my own safety out here in the middle of nowhere. I believe our life is more often in our own hands than not.
This was a TRUSTING young lady who was extremely trust-worthy herself. This is why she assumed the man she borrowed the cell phone from was honest as well. As my father once told me, “one can only trust as much as they can be trusted themselves.” Make sense? The girl simply trusted to her demise.
You see, a YOUNG trusting person would not assume someone is lying, or able to harm them in any way because it does not enter their minds. Why would it? They are honest, are used to honest friends and family, and would be more than willing to do anything they could for a friend OR stranger.
Sadly, Michelle’s equally trust-worthy friends have learned a hard lesson about ‘trusting’ from her death.
Brenda
brenda. AGREED. You can’t trust ANYONE. You have to have STREET SMARTS !!!!!!!!!
Violence upon others has got to end. Employers, landlords, DMV and car dealerships need to screen people for criminal pasts. If this Rooney guy had outstanding warrants and/or arrests against him, he should have been caught before Michelle went missing. Too many wonderful, trusting people are loosing their innocence and/or lives because of the evil predators that are intent on destroying them. If he had sexually assaulted a former girlfriend’s daughter as I have read, he should have been in jail or had his penis removed. I mean it. Or, sexual offenders should receive lobotomies to neutralize their perverted sexual impulses. Put them on a chain gang to clean up the highways of the U.S.
My thoughts and prayers to this beautiful young girls family, such a tragedy.
If there were ever a good weapon for a girl to have, it’s those taizers (?). That’s what I give my daughter when she goes to a bar. All it takes is just a jolt and you can calmly call the police and have him picked up. If he starts to get up just touch him again.
There is nothing illegal about them. Mine looks like a cell phone.
The world has gone awry, God help us all.
alaan k. My feelings exactly !!!!!!!!!!!!
You’re right. The world has gone awry. That’s why I carry mine when I take my son for a walk in his stroller. I
don’t trust ANYBODY. It’s not my fault and it’s better than using a gun. I wouldn’t want to kill anybody.
Besides, when was the last time you had a pervert jump out of the bushes at you or felt that queery feeling like someone is looking at you to find that the man behind you in the movie theatre is staring a hole in the back of your head because he has gotten himself quite sexually aroused over you.
There is no bigger curse than that of being a beautiful woman.
And I’m proud that at least I have the brains to want to protect myself. What’s really sick are the girls that just laugh about it and think that its exciting.
And that has nothing to do with this case.
I thought I was offering some sound advise to women, or girls that wanted to arm themselves. Don’t worry Allan, we won’t use it on you ………….. provided that you stay in line. LOL
Anybody that has lost someone to violence or has been a victim, themselves, know what I’m talking about.
Men are a trip!!!!! How many men do you know that have guns and/or knives for personal protection and the first time a girl says something about having self defense, they act like we’ve gone mad. So tell me something I don’t know.
I’m mad… What’s your excuse???????
Alan K. You’re right and, nothing against you, I’m gonna go through the rest of my life with tazer in hand. It took the world a while to get this bad and I’m not taking any chances with my life nor with that of my daughter’s.
Some of us monkeys are smart some of the time, but no monkey is smart all of the time and if any of those perverted deranged folks come after me or mine, they’re gonna get it.
Sorry if that offends anyone.
Alan K. You’re right and, nothing against you, but I’m gonna go through the rest of my life with tazer in hand. It took the world a while to get this bad and I’m not taking any chances with my life nor with that of my daughter’s.
Some of us monkeys are smart some of the time, but no monkey is smart all of the time and if any of those perverted deranged folks come after me or mine, they’re gonna get it.
Sorry if that offends anyone.
Patti, thanks for a good idea? Less messy than my .357 :>)
Brenda
patti, ALSO alot SMARTER than that 357 !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gretamal would like to disarm America. The .357 is actually the more efficient way to keep ones self save since you can be a little bit further away to use a gun than a taser….still like the taser idea though….
Brenda
P.S. Good thing our forefathers had the common (very simple and common) sense to know good citizens deserve the right to defend themselves.
#19 Brenda T.; Agreed, that’s why we are called “citizens” and not “subjects!”