(This is a reprint of a column I wrote when Rochester police officer Daryl Pierson was killed in the line of duty five years ago today.)
Daryl Pierson died on a beautiful day.
It was bright and warm and it dawned clear. He had worked the night before, his first shift after eight months of layoff due to a hand injury.
That happens to cops.
They get hurt.
It’s not all paperwork and donuts, and sometimes it hits the fan and you come home gimped up.
They had been a great eight months. Maybe the best of his life.
And it had been a good life.
He grew up in East Rochester. They call it the Home of Champions. It’s a little Italian town crammed between the big-money suburbs on the Eastside. It’s a good place to grow up and a good place to go to school.
That’s why his single mom worked three or four jobs most of the time he was growing up, so she could keep her family in East Rochester.
And maybe it was appreciation for that that years later moved him to buy the house off the back yard. He wanted to raise his family where he had been raised.
They loved him in the school there. A big kid with a good heart. Polite, positive, principled and strong. Good at sports. When the principal talked about him the other day he broke down and wept.
He worked behind the meat counter at the Village Fair to pay for college, and stayed there until he hired on with the city. That was eight years ago.
Eight great years.
He loved it, and it loved him. There were nearly a dozen commendation letters in his file, all signed by the chief, attesting to one feat of bravery and service or another.
That’s how he got on the tactical squad.
That, and some of the stuff he picked up in Afghanistan with the National Guard.
He was one of the fire eaters. One of the fine young corps of officers who give a department its strength.
But the layoff had been a blessing.
Eight months to be home with his family while his hand healed. It was him and Amy, and their 4-year-old boy Christian, and Amy was pregnant.
But the baby came early, five weeks early, and Daryl called her their miracle baby. They named her Charity and she was the apple of her daddy’s eye.
Then Tuesday night he went back to work.
And Wednesday he was up early to see Christian off for the first day of kindergarten.
One of those days you never forget.
Pictures and smiles and tears.
A little boy’s first day of school.
And last day with daddy.
At least in this sad case.
Because about 9:30 that night, up in the old Polish streets south of St. Stanislaus, they got called backup on a squirrely traffic stop two blocks one way from where DiPonzio got shot in the head five years ago and two blocks the other way from where Strassner got shot in the gut 15 years before that.
There were two guys in the car when the first unit initiated the traffic stop but only one when they got it pulled over, so Daryl Pierson and Mike DiPaula went to shag the other guy. They saw a likely prospect, he matched the description pretty good, and Pierson got out to go talk to him while DiPaula followed closely in the blue and white.
Then the guy ran.
A guy who had gotten out of prison three weeks before and never quite gotten around to check in with his parole officer. A guy who had been imprisoned for a previous parole violation and who had threatened a police officer before. A guy with a .25 auto in his pocket. A guy who would, after weaving through the string of cars parked along the curb, swing back on the closing officer and fire at his head.
No chance to respond, no time to reach for the gun, just a swing back and a discharge.
One round, one loud report, and an unconscious cop crashing because of momentum onto his assailant. Then another shot as the two of them fall, and DiPaola leaping from the car. A quick foot chase and the bad guy swings around again and DiPaola shoots him once in the abdomen.
You can hear the bad guy whine in the background of DiPaola’s radio call. The suspect is down, he says, and an officer is down, and hurry up because a big crowd is starting to gather.
Daryl Pierson was carried through the door at the ED two and a half minutes later, and an hour later they called it.
Thirty-two, and never to be 33. His bride of 10 years at home, with their kindergartner and newborn. The shockwaves still reverberate through his department and his town.
But Daryl Pierson died on a beautiful day, at the happiest time of his life, and maybe we see the tender mercies of God in that.
Maybe an injured hand, and an early birth, gave him and his family a last gift of time together before they are reunited in eternity. Maybe these eight months, and those five weeks of prematurity, were an unknowing but loving long goodbye.
And maybe an all-knowing God, aware of the looming evil of an ex-con, unwilling to take away one man’s freedom to do wrong, sent to face it another man who had always used his freedom to do right.
Another man who, in a life that must include death, was, by virtue of his character and purity, ready to meet death and what is on the other side of it. A murderer can decide to kill a cop, but a loving God can decide which cop.
And perhaps the God who sent his own Son to spare us, sent this cop to spare others. Others of his department who, in the randomness of schedules and calls, could have gotten backup on a squirrely traffic stop last Wednesday night.
But they didn’t, and he did.
And he died for them, and for us.
For reasons we can’t understand, and which faith tells us we must accept. We can’t know why this great man, or his poor wife, or those two innocent children. But we can take comfort in knowing that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. And there is nothing asked of us that we cannot bear and endure.
They took the best on Golgotha, and maybe they took the best on Hudson Avenue, too.
And maybe it falls to us to go forward in faith, doing our best and giving our all.
Daryl Pierson died.
But he died on a beautiful day.
In his town, and in his life.