Badge 36

July 25, 2009

POLICE, FAMILY RECALL
THE MAN BEHIND THE SHIELD
ON THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH.


BADGE 36


PATRICK E. LITOWITZ
plitowitz@ncnewsonline.com

Anthony Lagnese walks into work and wants to see his friend.

Robert J. Lepore is not there.

A year ago today, the New Castle police department’s detective sergeant died at Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh. Two weeks earlier, the veteran officer had suffered severe injures when his SUV struck a utility police. The 44-year-old Mahoningtown resident was off-duty at the time.

“It’s definitely something I still think about everyday,” said Lagnese, a corporal in the department’s narcotics unit. “I go to the office and still expect to see him there.

“I still expect to see him come through the door.”

Badge No. 36 – retired. A photo of Lepore – the department’s solemn tribute.

“The department’s different now,” Cpl. Bob Salem said. “You walk into the detective’s bureau. Every day, you look at his chair. You look at his desk.

“He had a shrine of pictures of his kids on the wall. It’s just empty now.”

His family and police brethren continue to grieve and remember on the one-year anniversary of his death. Lepore would have preferred otherwise.

“Bobby would want us to go forward and not mourn him that much,” his mother, Helen, said.

Lepore was a police officer.

“I told him, ‘Bobby, that’s your profession, but you’re a man. You’re a father,’” she recalled. “He said, “Ma, I identify myself as a police officer.’

“And then I found out why. So many people came up to me and said, ‘He told me if there was any problem, you come up to me.’ He didn’t just say it. He meant it.”

News of the accident sparked prayer vigils and support throughout Mahoningtown for Lepore and his family.

“He was a leader in our community, and he was a leader in his family,” niece Heather Micco said. “Bobby was like the nucleus that held us all together.

“You never thought something would happen to him because of his passion, his strength. You keep wanting to wake up from the nightmare.”

Lepore’s two sons – Thomas, 21, and Mike, 24 – are following their father’s career path in law enforcement. The decision was made before their father’s death.

“I always wanted to grow up and do it,” said Thomas Lepore, a security officer with Jameson Health System.

He was the last family member to see his father before emergency personnel flew Lepore to Pittsburgh for treatment.

“That day my mum called me,” Thomas recalled. “(She said), ‘There’s a big wreck on Atlantic.’
“I didn’t know it was him.”

His stepfather found Thomas and relayed what had happened.

“I caught (my dad) a brief second,” he said. “I gave him a kiss and told him I loved him.
“He just screamed my name.”

Thomas remains undeterred in his desire to be a police officer. If given the opportunity, he would join the New Castle police force “in a second.”

Mike works at the Lawrence County jail.

“He always wanted (better) for me and Thomas,” he said. “He always wanted us to be better than him. He was there to give us the pros and cons of everything.”

The pair took the department’s entrance exam in December.

“He always told me to do it right,” Mike said. “If I don’t get offered a job in New Castle, I’ll go somewhere else.”

The family mourns for another reason. After Lepore’s death, his two other children, Rian and Rakail, went with their biological mother to Washington, D.C. They returned to the area for four days in December.

“His family came first and that’s what kept him driven,” Micco said. “Four kids and he still found time for his family.”

Micco delivered her uncle’s eulogy during his funeral Mass at St. Vincent de Paul Church. Before she approached the altar, Thomas made a request.

“Make sure you tell them he was fearless.”