Funeral set for ATF agent killed during NY robbery

[January 06, 2012]  GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) -- As an ATF senior special agent, John Capano traveled the world, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Peru to Paraguay, sharing his expertise investigating the aftermath of bombings.

The 51-year-old father of two died in his hometown in New York on New Year's Eve, killed in a "friendly fire" shooting trying to stop a pharmacy robbery, becoming the first agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to be killed by gunfire in the line of duty since the infamous raid on a religious cult compound in Waco, Texas, in 1993.

Law enforcement officials from New York and beyond will gather Friday at a church on Long Island for Capano's funeral.

"We have special agents; John was a very special agent," Eric Immesberger, who heads the ATF's Long Island office, said this week in describing the 23-year veteran. "As a supervisor, John was a go-to guy for me. When I needed something done right the first time, I would ask John."

Immesberger described Capano has an intense individual who was "all-business" when it came to doing his job, but added: "As much as he did love ATF, he loved his family 100 times more." Capano is survived by his wife and a son and daughter.

Capano, who grew up in Seaford and lived in nearby Massapequa, was filling a prescription for his cancer-stricken father last Saturday when a man carrying what turned out to be a pellet gun announced a robbery in a Seaford pharmacy. Capano followed the suspect out the door where they struggled for Capano's weapon in a skirmish on the sidewalk.

A retired Nassau County police lieutenant who owns a deli three doors down, and an off-duty NYPD officer eating at the deli, raced to the scene. The attorney for the retired lieutenant said in an interview Thursday that his client, 54-year-old Christopher Geraghty, opened fire after a shot whizzed past him, mistakenly thinking that Capano was the robbery suspect.

Moments later, the NYPD officer shot and killed the hold-up man, later identified as a career criminal with a history of pharmacy robberies.

"He's devastated," attorney Brian Davis said of Geraghty. He said he is aware the Capano family does not blame him for the tragic outcome, and has sent a note of condolence, but said the shooting "will be with him for the rest of his life."

A spokesman for the ATF said Thursday that although Capano was not scheduled to be working that day -- he was on bereavement leave because his mother had died in mid-December -- his death is still considered to have happened in the line of duty. Spokesman Steven Bartholomew said that when Capano took action to stop the robbery in progress, he was acting as an ATF agent.

The shooting was the second friendly fire incident in Nassau County in the last year. A Nassau police officer in plainclothes was shot to death in March by a transit authority officer in Massapequa Park.

It was the second deadly holdup in a pharmacy on Long Island in 2011. In June, a gunman killed two store employees and two customers before fleeing with a backpack filled with painkillers.

[Associated Press; By FRANK ELTMAN]

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