Slain Man's Family Angry About Probe
By Olivia Winslow.
STAFF WRITER


The family of a Massapequa man killed by Nassau police during a drug raid in March said important information is being withheld from the grand jury investigating the case.

"All of the evidence isn't being presented to the grand jury," charged John P. Gianfortune, the Garden City lawyer for the family of Joseph Ricketts.    Ricketts, 26, was shot in the head after police said he failed to stop when ordered to, and reached for what they thought was a gun when police raided his home.   Speaking outside the grand jury room, Gianfortune said he was particularly troubled by the Nassau Medical Examiner's report that said Ricketts was shot by a gun that had a silencer on it.

Ricketts' sister, Monthia Ricketts, said she was frustrated after she attempted to tell the grand jury last week that a police officer told her Ricketts was shot by a gun with a silencer. She said her comments on that issue were stricken from the record.

The spokesman for the District Attorney Denis Dillon was unavailable for comment yesterday. But police, who have been declining to comment on the case, were quick to refute Gianfortune's claims.

"Police officers do not have silencers," said police department spokesman Officer Michael Aronsen. He said Officer Thomas Mazeika, a member of the precision firearms team and the officer who shot Ricketts, carried a department-issued weapon called an MP-5, which Aronsen described as a "rifle-type" gun. He said "sound suppressers" are part of those weapons, whereas a silencer is screwed onto a gun.  "It doesn't silence a gun, but it does make it less noisy," Aronsen said of the sound suppresser.

Aronsen said the medical examiner's use of the term silencer was incorrect.

The family and friends  also disputed the police contention that officers found a 9 mm gun wedged between Ricketts' mattress and the wall.

Greg Russo, 28, of Smithtown, who described himself as Ricketts' best friend, said he spent several hours with him until 3 a.m. on March 30. Three hours after Russo left his friend's home, Ricketts was dead.

Russo said he had been lying on Ricketts' mattress, which sat on the floor, and that there was no gun wedged between the mattress and the wall, as police claim.      Russo also argued that Ricketts could nothave been awake when police burst into his room at 6 a.m. because Ricketts was so drunk three hours earlier that it took Russo an hour to get him into the house. "Joseph Ricketts was not in any condition to do what police said he did," added Gianfortune.

The family has filed notice they plan to sue the county and police, alleging Ricketts' death was the result of negligence and reckless actions by authorities.

Copyright 1995, Newsday Inc.
Olivia Winslow, Slain Man's Family Angry About Probe., 10-03-1995, pp A22.