Pubdate: Tue, 23 Apr 2002
Source: Newsday (NY)
Copyright: 2002 Newsday Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308
Author: Paul Vitello
Related: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n783/a07.html

NOISE SURROUNDS HIS DEATH

It was the wrong place to be - a squalid, unfurnished house in North 
Bellport that neighbors complained was used as a drug bazaar - and the 
worst possible time to be there.

These are not capital offenses in a neighborhood where a quarter of the 
houses are boarded up, and where almost any time is the worst possible time.

But for those missteps, Jose Colon received the most brutal possible 
punishment of fate: he was shot in the head by police and killed Friday 
night in what police describe as an accident during a drug raid.

Colon was a 20-year-old college student, the oldest of nine siblings and 
step-siblings of a divorced set of parents who live in the area. He had a 
job as a mechanic at a Jiffy Lube. He had earned all but a few credits 
toward an associate degree, which in a few months would have made him the 
first one in his family with a college degree.

He also had an 18-year-old pregnant girlfriend, whom he planned to marry, 
and who was waiting in the car outside the house at 862 Doane Ave. in North 
Bellport at about 10:30 PM Friday when Colon went in, telling her he would 
be just a minute; he owed somebody $20.

The girlfriend, who does not want her name used, has since told friends 
that as she waited in the driver's seat of Colon's Bronco, a Suffolk police 
vehicle pulled into the driveway of the house, disgorging between six and 
10 officers.

As they fanned out and began advancing, guns drawn, a police helicopter 
arrived, hovering thunderously overhead.

Colon and an acquaintance, Aaron Hatcher, 20, emerged from the house. 
Hatcher was first. Police say they told both men to get down on the ground. 
Hatcher did, Colon didn't, they said.

The girlfriend told friends she didn't hear any such warning. She said she 
only heard the helicopter.

It is possible there was no command. It is also possible that Hatcher, 
being closer to the police, heard the command through the helicopter noise, 
and that Colon and his girlfriend didn't.

In any case, it might not have mattered whether Colon heard them or not. 
Police said a stumble over a tree root in the dark caused one officer to 
collide with another, causing the second officer's automatic weapon to 
discharge, killing Colon with one of three shots.

"They stepped over him like a dog and went into the house," the girlfriend 
told Kimberly Quinones, a family friend. "When the ambulance arrived, they 
couldn't help him because the cops kept everybody away while they were 
inside" making arrests.

(Suffolk Homicide Det. Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick said the helicopter carried two 
officers who were trained medical technicians. They were asked to land, and 
attended Colon, but found he was already dead.)

Four Bellport men, including Hatcher, were arrested and charged with 
possession of marijuana. Police also charged Hatcher with possession of a 
semi-automatic rifle, which they said they found in the house and which, 
they said, belonged to him.

Colon had no weapon and no marijuana, Fitzpatrick said.

The scene of the accident was still gruesome yesterday, almost three days 
after the event. Blood and fleshy matter remained visible on the steps and 
the ground nearby despite efforts by friends and family to cover the sight 
with flowers and rose petals.

On the ground, beneath the tree whose roots apparently tripped the officer, 
lay four rubber gloves apparently used by the emergency medical 
technicians. The four gloves mimicked hands crawling away from the front door.

Bullet holes in the door and in the left outside wall of the house were 
marked by police evidence technicians.

All afternoon, people stopped to place and light large glass-cased candles 
under the tree where Colon died. An open box of Newport cigarettes, his 
brand, was left on the stoop amid flowers and trinkets and a Puerto Rican flag.

"He was a good kid," said Domingo Colon, a 34-year-old house painter who 
was among the friends who stopped to pay their respects. He is not related. 
"He wanted something out of life. He loved the computer. He tried to stay 
away from trouble." Colon picked flecks of white paint from his fingers. 
"This is unbelievable."

Friends said Colon's girlfriend suffered a miscarriage over the weekend.

Lynn Salvage, president of Briarcliffe College, said Colon was a 
"well-liked and well-respected member" of the student body at the college's 
Patchogue campus.

At graduation ceremonies on June 1, she said, the school plans to present 
Colon's family with the Associate of Applied Science in graphic arts degree 
that he would have earned on that Saturday afternoon.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens