Galveston releases names of storm victims

Six deaths linked to Harvey include three drownings

More than a week after Hurricane Harvey battered the Lone Star State, officials in Galveston are beginning to release names of the six killed in the coastal county.

The first of the Galveston County storm deaths came on Aug. 26, when power went out in Bonnie Parsutt’s Santa Fe home. With no electricity, the 69-year-old’s oxygen tank failed, according to John Florence of the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office.

Her body was recovered a day later, as flooding wreaked havoc on the small town, inundating main thoroughfares and forcing mass evacuations.

The rising waters claimed three lives Aug. 27, as the worst of the deluge battered towns along the southern stretch of Interstate 45 near Galveston Island.

Bobby Murphy, 54, drowned during ill-fated rescue efforts in Dickinson. The same day, 59-year-old Patrick Hurley drowned in League City, and 83-year-old Peter Pellerien drowned in Dickinson.

Two days later, 80-yearold Mary Avila died in Texas City when she couldn’t get dialysis as a result of the storm and intense flooding.

Finally, on Sept. 3 Clevelon Brown, 64, of Dickinson, died after getting sepsis from floodwaters.

One death initially probed as possibly Harvey-related was eventually determined not to be. On Aug. 27, authorities found the body of a homeless man near shopping carts in a La Marque Walmart parking lot. Given the heavy rains the night before, authorities looked into whether the fatality was stormrelated but later found it wasn’t.