It seems even Mother Nature is in mourning for Brendan Horan and Ciara McDermott:
The dreary weather Tuesday amplified the sense of loss in Newington, where McDermott was the high school’s resource officer and was most recently helping students there deal with the death of classmate Brendan Horan, 17, who was killed in an ATV accident Friday.Makeshift memorials for McDermott and Horan that were left in the high school parking lot were drenched in the rain. Students had written on white bed sheets and hung them on a chain-link fence, but many of the messages written in red ink bled down the wet fabric and faded in the wintry drizzle.
The same article also notes that NHS students are getting fed up with all the media attention that the dual tragedy is causing:
Students who congregated around the memorials at the high school were angry and weary of the media attention surrounding the two deaths. A group of a dozen boys who stood in the rain over a cross and a bouquet of flowers asked to be left alone. They said the mood inside the school was somber and that they wanted the cameras and reporters to go away so they could grieve in peace.“We don’t have anything to say,” one student said.
When a television crew tried to film the group from a nearby sidewalk, the mournful boys immediately dispersed. McDermott had been providing grief counseling to students devastated by the death of Horan, said Vinny Bonavita, 15, a sophomore at the school. Bonavita said that Horan was his friend and that he also knew McDermott from last year, when she helped guide him through troubled times.
“She was helping to comfort us,” he said. “People are angry. The press keeps coming around and asking us questions. What more do you want? He’s gone. She’s gone. What else is there to say?”
That’s one thing we didn’t have to deal with, for the most part, while mourning Newington’s other dual November tragedy, eight years ago. Both of the 1997 deaths were of students — not of a student and a cop — so the media attention was less intense.
Anyway, the students’ feelings are understandable. Of course, the reporters’ actions are understandable too. This is simply one of those situations that just sucks.
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November 23rd, 2005 at 3:29:12 pm
yeah.. one of the major discussion topics among students is how much we hate all the press like.. sitting in the student parking lot and just invading. Some people are mad @ the ones who did talk to the press. I think people’s theories are that if no one talks the press wont get any stories and go away.
November 23rd, 2005 at 11:23:04 pm
I’d be surprised if there aren’t somewhat similar feelings over at Newington police headquarters, re a media onslaught which is understandable, yet unhelpful to the bereaved. It was only last month that the facility was officially reopened (following renovation & expansion) as the Peter J. Lavery Law Enforcement Center. Now for the second time in less than eleven months, Murder has taken a fellow officer from the men & women of the NPD. / It really Is too much even for Adults ~ even for sworn Law-enforcement Personnel ~ to be asked to bear. / But they will, of course. They Must; and therefore, they Will.
Meanwhile, doing its Duty to inform us of the facts, the Media tells us the heart-wrenching details of how the killer’s own defense attorney (previous charges were Pending) had alerted police to the sudden imminent danger to their sister Officer McDermott ~ but not in time, conceivably due to unavoidable Courtroom delay in the lawyer’s retrieval of an ominous cellphone message from his unhinged client. Extensive excerpts:
WEST HARTFORD — The message that troubled state Trooper Victor Diaz left on his lawyer’s cellphone had police cars rushing to the home of his ex-girlfriend in a frantic attempt to protect her.
They got there too late.
By the time the cruisers arrived Monday evening at the tan colonial house at 348 Ridgewood Road, their lights flashing in the rain and darkness, Newington police Officer Ciara McDermott lay slumped over her computer screen, shot three times in the head and chest.
…Less than three weeks ago, Diaz sat outside McDermott’s house and copied down the license plate numbers of a car parked in her driveway. He asked a friend with the state police to run the plate through their databases to see whose car it was, he would later admit to West Hartford police.
He learned that the car belonged to West Hartford police Officer James DeLuca, McDermott’s new boyfriend. Diaz began making harassing phone calls to McDermott until McDermott and DeLuca went to West Hartford police and filed a complaint.
But sources said McDermott decided not to follow through, withdrawing her harassment complaint because she said she could handle any problems with Diaz.
Police continued their probe into DeLuca’s complaint and obtained an arrest warrant last Wednesday, charging Diaz with illegal use of the databases, sources said.
…Diaz was scheduled to turn himself in to West Hartford police at 6 p.m. on Monday. At 4:20 he left a voice mail message with [Attorney Jeffery] Ment, saying plans had changed. He thanked Ment for all of his help and for standing by him, sources said.
Ment, who spent the afternoon in court, retrieved the message at 5:40 p.m. and, sensing danger, immediately dialed West Hartford police and the Troop H state police barracks where Diaz worked and advised officers to go check on McDermott.
“My first thought was that he was going to go to the police station and try and take out a couple of cops along with himself,” Ment said.
As Ment was calling police, DeLuca was heading to Ridgewood Road, concerned that he had been unable to reach McDermott on the phone. It was DeLuca who found McDermott slumped over the computer screen…
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An awful, horrible, unfathomable business.
At 7:30 pm Monday Leanna & I arrived at West Hartford’s Conard High School where she teaches an Adult Ed course. The police barricades began just down the street, and the state police helicopter hovered overhead, as they searched the nearby neighborhoods for the Suspect, whose own body had not yet been discovered in a locked upstairs room at the murder/suicide site. Conard students, at the school for an evening Ice Cream Social, were being kept inside the building at that time. Adults were being Requested not to leave also, until the situation was Resolved. By the time Leanna’s class was over, it was.
Re Newington High School, as if all This weren’t enough, it was only weeks ago, October 29, that a beloved former Wrestling coach there, Richard C. Hastings III, 45, father of 2 sons, perished in a local house fire.
Bob Aniello. Jen Partridge. Christina Guyon. Sarah LeFoll. Brendan Horan. Coach Richard Hastings. Master Police Officer Pete Lavery. NHS Resource Officer Ciara McDermott.
May all rest in peace, in the eternal care of a loving God. And may He grant consolation and comfort to all their families & friends & loved ones.
And to all the people of our good little town, so much the Poorer for the untimely Loss of them all.
November 24th, 2005 at 8:08:04 am
One thing you forgot, Brendan. In ‘97, only one of the deaths was an “accident.” If you recall, the administration refused to acknowledge BoB’s death because it was caused by his own hand. True, Jen was a tragic accident, but neither Hoey nor any of the other powers that be in the town ever officially acknowledged his death. And the fact that he refused to allow us to dedicate the yearbook that year (or any other year) to the memories of BoB and Jen furthers that issue.
Therefore, there was less media attention (though I do remember one or two news vans setting up across the street from school, trying to interview kids, but with limited success).