SUFFOLK POLICE MEET WITH PUBLIC OVER SHOOTING

With public mistrust seething more than month after Suffolk police
accidentally shot and killed a Bellport man during a drug raid, several of
department's top officials took the unusual step of meeting with the public
Wednesday night to openly discuss what went wrong and apologize.

More than 100 people filled the Frank P. Long Intermediate School cafeteria
for a two-hour meeting that was by turns reassuring and emotionally taut.
The meeting was called by Jose Colon's mother, Cathy Seaton, who has
initiated a wrongful death suit against the county but otherwise retreated
from commenting publicly about her son's death.

During the meeting, police explained how one officer tripped over a root
and fell into another officer who fired three rounds, one of which struck
Colon in the head. Not everyone was mollified. At one point, Colon's aunt,
Ana Maldonado of Bay Shore said: "I'm trying to process it and it still
doesn't make sense."

"We wish it hadn't happened," Chief of Patrol Thomas Compitello replied.

"Yeah, but it did," Maldonado said.