Lest we forget. From the NY Daily News, Dec. 29:
Kiss before dying
As his father lay dying, crushed by a car that smashed into his Long Island house, Brian Calhoun gave him a final kiss.
“There was no question about it, he was going to die,” Calhoun, 25, said yesterday, the day after a driver fleeing police killed his dad, William Calhoun.
“I knelt down in front of him and let him know how much I loved him…And then I kissed him on the forehead.”
Cops were chasing parolee Richard Mair on Thursday when he lost control of his Pontiac sedan, barreled across William Calhoun’s lawn and tore through an exterior wall of the home, police said.
The car then shot through an empty garage and exploded into the living room, directly into the couch where Calhoun sat, his son said.
Brian Calhoun had spent “a father and son day” with his 59-year-old dad, who had taken the week off from his electrician’s job. They saw “Rocky Balboa,” picked up lunch at Wendy’s and headed home to Fulton St. in Farmingdale.
After they ate in the kitchen, the younger Calhoun went to the basement to watch a DVD.
“Maybe five minutes after I started watching it, I heard an explosion and saw the ceiling shake and pieces of Sheetrock fall off,” he said. “The first thing I thought of was my father.”
Calhoun climbed over the rubble, screaming for his dad.
“Out of the corner of my eye I saw some guy scrambling, running,” he said. “I saw four or five cops running through with their guns drawn, screaming at him to get down.”
Mair was kicking and yelling as police tried to arrest him.
“As all this was going on…I saw my father crushed inside the couch,” he said.
Calhoun said a prayer and went to the Vietnam vet’s side.
“I just wanted to assure him…that the things he cared most about would be taken care of,” he said.
Calhoun called his dad an “amazing human being” whose top concern was his children, especially his 19-year-old developmentally disabled son.
As his dad died, Calhoun told him, “I was going to be strong and take care of everyone, especially my little brother.”
Suffolk County authorities plan to charge Mair, of Mastic, with DWI and fleeing police, but other counts could be added. He was on parole after serving almost three years in prison for drug possession, police said.
Calhoun said he was angry about the chase that led to his father’s death but stopped short of blaming cops, who suspected Mair was in a drug deal.
“I want the most severe punishment there could possibly be for this guy,” he said.
Police said their preliminary investigation shows that the officer involved in the chase acted within department guidelines.
Suffolk Police Commissioner Richard Dormer released a statement saying police “do not want to send out a message that all one has to do in order to avoid being apprehended by police…is to flee.” .
See more reasons WHY WE FIGHT.
