Suffolk County 6th Precinct police officer Jon-Erik Negron and Bryce Pappalardo, whom he helped save after the family gave birth to the not-breathing baby in their kitchen. Photo from SCPD
Mount Sinai teacher Mike Pappalardo felt such a special bond with officer Jon-Erik Negron, who helped save his newborn son Bryce after being born in the family’s kitchen last August, that he named him Bryce’s godfather.
“He’s been there for Bryce since his first breath,” Pappalardo said. “He’s just so genuine and asked us to keep in touch with him, to let him know how Bryce is doing. It made us think, ‘You know what? We want him in his life.’”
Suffolk County police officer Jon-Erik Negron and the Pappalardo family at baby Bryce’s christening, where Negron was named the baby’s godfather. Photo from SCPD
The Mount Sinai Middle School special education teacher and coach first met the 6th Precinct offer Aug. 22 when he responded to his home after his wife Jane went into labor in the family’s home. Bryce was delivered by his father, but was not breathing, and the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. Even after Mike Pappalardo removed the cord, the newborn still hadn’t taken a breath. Officer Negron used a plastic syringe from the family’s kitchen to clear fluid from Bryce’s airway, and the baby began breathing.
“We have always had a connection,” said Negron, who speaks weekly with the family. “I’m just happy to play a role and I’m happy to always be there and always help because I know Bryce is going to grow up to do great things.”
The Pappalardo family said asking Negron to be the godfather was a no-brainer.
“Before even asking him to be the godfather, we felt like he already was,” Pappalardo said. “It was an easy choice. We were just hoping it would be ok with him and when we asked him, he said he was blown away and would be honored, but we were honored he agreed. We consider Jon-Erik family now.”
The officer was bestowed the honor during Bryce’s christening June 23 at Infant Jesus Roman Catholic Church in Port Jefferson.
“I don’t know if Bryce would be here if it wasn’t for his quick thinking and knowledge,” Pappalardo said of Negron. “He’s emotionally connected to Bryce and he truly cares about him and what happens in his life. Jon-Erik and Bryce have a special connection that will last a lifetime.”
“This superseded anything I imagined on having an impact as a police officer.”
— Jon-Erik Negron
Several months ago, the Pappalardos publicly thanked Officer Negron as well as 6th Precinct officer Ferdinando Crasa, fire rescue and emergency service dispatcher Steve Platz and SCPD public safety dispatcher Jonathan Eck, for their efforts during the delivery.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said congratulations to Negron are in order.
“I am truly thankful for all first responders out there like officer Negron, and it warms my heart to see their tireless work appreciated in this sincere act of gratitude,” he said.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart also commended Negron for his heroic effort.
“Bryce is lucky to have Officer Negron is in his life as a wonderful role model,” she said. “We are so grateful that baby Bryce is healthy and thriving due in part to our first responders.”
Negron has been a Suffolk County police officer for four-and-a-half years. He said playing a role in a baby delivery never crossed his mind when he thought of becoming a police officer.
“This superseded anything I imagined on having an impact as a police officer,” he said. “This is probably the most meaningful thing that will happen to me on this job and it exceeded all expectations.”
The Mingoias: Samantha, Gina, Denise and Sal. Photo from Gina Mingoia
By Kevin Redding
Throughout his life Salvatore Mingoia brought smiles, laughs and music to those around him. And even though he’s gone, the impact of Shoreham’s “Superman” will surely resonate forever.
The Suffolk County police officer, Beatles-loving musician, devoted family man and friend to all died Oct. 9 following a two-year battle with lymphoma at 56 in the company of friends and family at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. Although Mingoia had been in a great deal of pain as a result of his cancer,
which was diagnosed in December 2015, he never once let it show or get him down, according to his family.
Sal Mingoia was a devoted family man to his daughters Samantha and Gina. Photo from Gina Mingoia
“He was the nicest guy in the world,” said his oldest daughter Samantha Mingoia, 25. “I want to be my dad when I grow up. He was so caring, giving and understanding. Anything he could do to help someone, he’d do it and he never looked for praise.”
His trademarkupbeatness and kind character prevailed even under the circumstances — when nurses asked how he was feeling on a particular day, Mingoia always responded with a chipper “I’m great! How are you?”
This, of course, was not at all surprising to those who knew him.
“He was a sweetheart of a man,” said Suffolk County Sgt. Arthur Hughes, Mingoia’s colleague for more than 30 years. “Everyone loves Sal. You can’t say anything bad about him.”
Gina Mingoia, 19, said her dad was always “so strong and hopeful right up until the end.” She regularly shared the stage with him as a two-piece band, serving as lead singer while he played guitar during gigs throughout the area. They played everything from country to classic rock, from covers to songs they wrote together.
“It was comforting,” she said on rocking alongside her dad. “Now, if I ever have to sing the national anthem or anything and my dad isn’t with me, I’m going to get panicky. I need him. He’s like a safety blanket.”
Sal Mingoia, on right, was a musician from a young age. Photo from SCPD
His daughters said while they both saw Mingoia as the best dad ever and knew how beloved he was by peers and colleagues, it wasn’t until the wake that they grasped just how many lives he touched. During the first service alone, Samantha said nearly 800 people, maybe more, showed up creating a huge line that wrapped around O.B. Davis Funeral Home in Miller Place and stretched down the street. Even a friend of his from kindergarten, from North Carolina, came to pay his respects.
“They all said the same thing — that he treated them like they were the most important people to him,” Samantha Mingoia said. “He always made everyone feel so special.”
A graduate of Centereach High School, Mingoia, one of seven children, played football and competed in track and field while excelling in math and science. An avid musician from the moment he was able to hold a guitar, he played in numerous bands throughout his life, the first being a family band with his father and brothers.
“He was talented, handsome, nice, always good to people — he was just born special,” said his older sister Eydie Gangitano. “And I’ve got to tell you, I think Sal was my mother’s favorite, I really think he was. And we didn’t care, because he was all of our favorite.”
“He was talented, handsome, nice, always good to people — he was just born special.”
— Eydie Gangitano
Mike Pollice, a friend of Mingoia’s for more than 40 years, met him in school and said although they were on opposite ends of the spectrum — Mingoia being seemingly well-grounded while Pollice was a self-
proclaimed “troubled kid” — Mingoia saw past that, and initiated a conversation with him over music. The two had played in bands together ever since.
“He had a heart like nobody else,” Pollice said, who described Mingoia as the salt of the Earth. “I really would not be the man I am today if it weren’t for him. The path he led me down with music served me well and kept me out of a lot of bad things in my younger days. In school, he was the guy who stuck up for people getting picked on. He was a friend to everyone. A very rare kind of person.”
After high school, Mingoia wound up at the police academy even though being a cop wasn’t exactly what he had planned for himself. His childhood friend Kenny Kearns was a New York City police officer and planned to take the test to transition to Suffolk County and encouraged Mingoia to take it too. He ended up getting a better result than Kearns and decided give the occupation a try. He joined the police department in April 1987, spending his career in the 5th and 6th Precincts and was an active officer in the Crime Scene Section
when he died, an analytical field he much preferred over issuing traffic tickets.
“He didn’t like ruining people’s days, he liked making people’s days,” Kearns said of his friend. “If Sal pulled you over, and you had a good excuse and were sorry, that was good enough for him.”
Sal Mingoiaa Suffolk County police officer, working in the Crime Scene Section when he died. Photo from SCPD
Kearns often visited with Mingoia at Mount Sinai Hospital when he was sick, and was present when he passed away.
“The last time I was in that hospital with Sal was 30 years ago when he donated blood to my father who was undergoing cancer-related surgery,” he said. “He’s been a constant in my life. Someone I could always count on. He was the true definition of a best friend.”
Those who knew him best say, despite how dedicated he was to his job on the force or as a friend, his greatest passion in life was being a husband to Denise, whom he married in 1990, and father to his two daughters. Not only did Mingoia never miss a day of work in his life, he never missed a family dinner or birthday party either.
“He was Superman,” Gina Mingoia said of her dad. “He always had his day full, but made room for everyone.”
She often thinks of goofy moments now when she thinks about her dad. Like when they were rehearsing a song and she struggled to remember an entire verse.
“He put his guitar down and rolled around on the floor, then stood back up and grabbed his guitar again,” she recalled. “I was like, ‘Why did you do that?’ and he said, ‘So you would never forget that line again.’”
For Samantha Mingoia, she said she’ll simply miss sitting around the house with her father.
“Every night we all ate dinner as a family and then just never left the table,” she said. “We’d sit there until 9 p.m. talking about the day, philosophies about life, politics, anything. The house is definitely quiet and empty now.”
Sheldon Leftenant, the man who allegedly shot police officer Mark Collins, is escorted out of the 3rd Precinct on his way to arraignment in March. File photo by Barbara Donlon
A trial will begin Tuesday for a man accused of shooting an officer after fleeing a police stop in Huntington Station last winter.
Officer Mark Collins was seriously injured when he was shot in the neck and the hip on the night of March 11 during an alleged struggle with the suspect, 23-year-old Huntington Station resident Sheldon Leftenant, who has pleaded not guilty to attempted aggravated murder of a police officer, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and resisting arrest.
Suffolk County District Attorney Tom Spota said earlier this year that Leftenant faces up to life in prison if he is convicted.
Collins was in plainclothes while working for the 2nd Precinct’s gang unit on the night of the shooting, and helped pull over a car in which Leftenant was a passenger, Spota said. When asked to get out of the car, the suspect fled and Collins gave chase until he cornered Leftenant, an alleged member of the “Tip Top Boyz” street gang, on Mercer Court.
“He had his police-issued Taser in hand,” Spota said. “He never drew his weapon.”
The DA said at the time that Collins, who was unaware the suspect had a gun, used his Taser on Leftenant twice, hitting him in his back.
Sheldon Leftenant, the man who allegedly shot police officer Mark Collins, is escorted to his arraignment in March. File photo by Barbara Donlon
“While it brought the defendant to the ground, unfortunately it did not completely immobilize him,” Spota said.
When Collins went to handcuff Leftenant in that Mercer Court driveway, there was struggle, he said. A gun fired four times in quick succession and Collins was shot in the hip and in the neck, close to his carotid artery.
“Collins knew right away he had been shot because he couldn’t feel anything on his right side and he couldn’t move at all his right arm or his right leg,” Spota said.
To protect himself, the injured officer dragged himself over to a stoop and took cover under his bulletproof vest, facing it toward the suspect.
Spota said Leftenant fled after the shooting and dropped the weapon in the backyard of a neighboring property before hiding about a quarter of a mile from the scene.
Canine unit officers arrived and found both the gun allegedly used to shoot Collins as well as Leftenant.
At the time of Leftenant’s arraignment, defense attorney Ian Fitzgerald said his client was sorry to be in this situation, but wouldn’t comment any further.
A handful of the suspect’s family members were in the audience at that court appearance. They would not comment on Leftenant’s case either, but they left the courtroom chanting, “Free Shel.”
This case was not the first time Leftenant’s name had been involved in a shooting. About seven months earlier, he was shot in the groin while standing with a group of people in front of his Tippin Drive home, when two vehicles drove by and someone fired a gun.
At that time, police said Leftenant was originally treated for non-life-threatening injuries at Huntington Hospital and later underwent surgery at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset.
Although Collins was seriously wounded in the shooting last March, he has since recovered and returned to work, the DA’s office said recently, calling the officer “a decorated 13-year veteran.”
The two other shots from the .38-caliber revolver were found inside the home on whose property the struggle took place, the DA said, but no one inside at the time was injured.
Opening statements in Leftenant’s trial were scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. on Tuesday in Riverhead.
Members of TULIPS, including Philip Schoppmann, second from the right, celebrate the officer’s Excellence in Suicide Prevention Award. Photo from Philip Schoppmann
Police Officer Philip Schoppmann, a Smithtown resident, has been awarded the Excellence in Suicide Prevention Award. Schoppmann is a Suffolk County police officer at the 5th precinct.
Schoppmann is the founder of Trainers United on Long Island for the Prevention of Suicide, or TULIPS. The volunteer group teaches different communities throughout the state of New York suicide prevention and intervention skills. It was established almost a year ago, and the group travels everywhere, all the way from Buffalo to Montauk.
TULIPS is made up of four trainers and includes social workers, state employees, and a marriage and family therapist. Schoppmann said that the group would help train more than 1,000 people by the end of the year.
“Phil is a huge advocate to raise awareness,” Brooke Yonick, a member of TULIPS and co-worker of Schoppmann said in phone interview. “He works nonstop to do what he can to help anyone in need; police officers, citizens, veterans.”
Schoppmann met the other three members of TULIPS at a training program in Albany, and “he really spearheaded the group by naming us and encouraging us to work together, since we’re all from the same region,” Yonick said.
Diane Sweet, another member of TULIPS, agreed that Schoppmann has been the manager of this organization. “Phil’s got the vision. He is the Indian chief and I am just a very happy follower,” Sweet said in an interview.
Aside from being a member of TULIPS, Schoppmann is actively involved in many other suicide prevention programs. He is a member of the Suicide Prevention Coalition, and he also helped create the Suffolk County police department’s Providing Enforcers Education and Resources group, also known as PEER. PEER supports other area police officers who might be going through troubling times.
Schoppmann received funding through a mini grant from the Mental Health Association of New York State to help create a tool called DISTRACT. DISTRACT is a safety plan to use when working with suicidal individuals.
“We want to distract people from death and help them think about life through this safety plan,” Schoppmann said in a phone interview.
He wanted to create this program because he felt that a lot of suicide prevention programs out there teach you the necessary tools, but do not give you something concrete and tangible to go home with or to give to people with suicidal thoughts. He describes it as a list of tasks for the person to stay safe and stay alive.
“A person can fill this out with you so they feel connected. They can walk away with it, and when they feel depressed and need something to focus on, this can be it,” Schoppmann said.
Schoppmann first got involved in suicide prevention when he was a police officer working in New York City. He volunteered there as a peer support officer, and dealt with police officers who were experiencing suicidal thoughts.
“I was scared,” Schoppmann said. “These officers had guns, and were expressing suicidal thoughts. I had to do something, so I looked into learning skills for prevention.”
When Schoppmann moved out to Smithtown, he carried the ideas of this program with him to Suffolk County, with the PEER program. He resides in Smithtown with his wife Dikea; their two sons, John-Michael and Jordan; and a third baby on the way.
Linda Sherlock-Reich, the final member of TULIPS, said she couldn’t say enough about Schoppmann. “He’s amazing, he’s passionate and he coordinates everything. I always say I think he’s a robot because there is no way a human can accomplish the amount of things that he does.”
If you or a loved one is having suicidal thoughts, please contact the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
