Daily News cover from Nov. 1, 2007
Five cops killed since 2006
Front-page coverage from the Daily News
Highway Patrol Officer Patrick McDonald was the fifth police officer in Philadelphia to be killed in the line of duty since 2006. Here are the first-day stories from the killings of Officer Gary Skerski, Officer Charles Cassidy, Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski and Officer Isabel Nazario.
A veteran police officer responding to a report of a robbery at a Northeast Philadelphia bar was killed last night by a shotgun blast from a would-be robber wearing a ski mask, police said.
Officer Gary Skerski, 46, a 16-year veteran who was well-known to civic groups in the Lower Northeast, was reportedly hit in the neck at Pat's Cafe in the Northwood section. He was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he arrived shortly after 10 p.m. and was pronounced dead 15 minutes later.
WITH PHILADELPHIA Police Officer Charles Cassidy collapsed next to a trash can, a bullet embedded in his brain, the man who shot him carried out one final insult against the veteran lawman.
Carrying his own gun in one hand, the brazen thug stole the officer's police-issued revolver from the sidewalk and ran. Cassidy, a police officer of 25 years and a married father of three, remains in "extremely, extremely, extremely" critical condition at Albert Einstein Medical Center, Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said.
Thursday will be the anniversary of the killing of Police Officer Gary Skerski, who was shot to death May 8, 2006, when he responded to a holdup at a bar in Northeast Philadelphia.
There may be a certain irony in the fact that Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski was shot to death Saturday, five days before that date, while responding to the robbery of a bank.
About 9 p.m., police began pursuing a white Cadillac Escalade near 46th and Westminster after the car failed to stop when police tried to pull it over, said Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman.
Nazario and Tull learned of the pursuit and decided to join in, he said. As they headed south on 39th Street with Tull at the wheel, the Escalade , being driven by a 16-year-old unlicensed male traveling east on Wallace Street, broadsided their cruiser near the passenger door, police said.
Nazario, 40, a mother with 18 years on the force, was killed instantly.
