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Travis Gallo, who was arraigned in a Hackensack courtroom this morning, had been at odds and bickering constantly with his sister, Teia, they said.
Defense attorney Kevin G. Roe entered a not-guilty plea this morning on behalf of Travis, who turns 19 on Feb. 11.
Gallo was then returned to the Bergen County Jail, where he remains held on $2 million bail under an indictment charging him with murder, illegal weapons possession and evidence tampering by “washing blood off his hands and arms and [the] knife and trying to hide the knife.”
Authorities originally charged Gallo as a juvenile but got the case waived to adult criminal court due to the nature of the crime and how close he was to his 18th birthday.
Prosecutors said the 6-foot-3-inch, 215-pound Gallo stabbed his sister during an argument in the family kitchen the day after Christmas.
The younger brother called police and a fourth sibling arrived at the Pershing Avenue home off Ridgewood Road around the same time as responding officers, authorities said at the time.
Teia Gallo had been stabbed no fewer than two dozen times, and possibly as many as 30, multiple sources told CLIFFVIEW PILOT. She was still alive when the first emergency responders found here, but ALS paramedics pronounced her dead less than a half-hour later,
The family patriarch, Robert Gallo — a popular gynecologist at Hackensack University Medical Center — and his wife, Theresa, have nine biological children along with Travis and a teenage sister of his and Teia’s.
Teia was a junior at Dominican College in Orangeburg, where she was studying to become a physical therapist.
Travis, a special education senior at Westwood Regional High School, received home education from the district.
A source with knowledge of the situation said one of the siblings suffered a black eye while breaking up an argument between Travis and one of his sisters weeks before she was killed.
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