Cranston firefighter John Nottel Jr., center, carries the helmet of fellow firefighter Lt. James Pagano following a funeral service in Cranston. With him are firefighters David Warburton, left, and Joseph Lupino.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

CRANSTON — A ball, a tennis ball, set off on an errant flight along a neighborhood street and five days later Jerry Carnevale stood outside the Church of St. Mark watching the calamitous consequence slowly approaching.

“Makes no sense,” he said as the church bell prepared to toll and the muffled beat of drums grew louder. “And to shoot in front of kids.” He shook his head. “This is a terrible thing.”

By the hundreds they came yesterday, the wrenched family and friends and fellow firefighters of James Pagano, each taking their proper place in a formal procession of grief — and disbelief.

Last Sunday afternoon, Pagano and his wife, Adriana, hosted a birthday party for their young son. Outside on Daisy Court that tennis ball struck the car of Pagano’s next-door neighbor, Nicholas Gianquitti. Witnesses say Gianquitti began shouting and swearing at the kids playing and Pagano went next door to confront him about his language. Gianquitti often complained about children’s balls going on his property.

The men scuffled at the door where the sound of the first gunshot popped. Then, witnesses say, Gianquitti pursued Pagano onto his front yard, firing at him again as he ran around a bush and then again as he crouched beside a parked car, perhaps already mortally wounded.

Gianquitti turned away and walked back inside his home while James A. Pagano, 44, a father of two and a 17-year veteran of the local Fire Department, lay dying.

THE BAGPIPES sighed still and the street corner of onlookers fell quiet as an undertaker opened the hearse and spread out the casket carrier, shining golden in the sun.

The slow procession had come through Pagano’s boyhood neighborhood of Garden City, where for a moment many stopped in respect. Outside the Cranston-Johnston Catholic Regional School, the younger children clasped their hands while the older children covered their hearts as the snapping flags of the Cranston fire and police departments passed by.

Now outside the church, the six pallbearers, all Cranston firefighters, lifted the red mahogany casket from the hearse. As the bagpipes and drum corps played a dirge, the men wheeled the casket down a walkway lined on each side with firefighters offering white-gloved salutes.

Pagano’s family followed. Some burst into tears but kept going.

As more than 700 people crowded into a church with a capacity of 600, one man who’d known Pagano as a boy remained outside under the trees.

Greg Mancini, now of North Kingstown, remembered the childhood days in Garden City, when he, Pagano, and the other boys hopped over fences and cut through each other’s yards to play pickup ball games after school.

Mancini said he’d waited two hours in line at Pagano’s wake on Thursday night as thousands came to pay their respects. He saw many of the old gang who had come back for Jimmy, some even flying from across the country.

“Jimmy was a very good-natured person,” Mancini said. And, “he’d always wanted to be a community person.”

“IN THE MYSTERY of our journey as human beings, life and death are with us,” said the Rev. Thomas D. McGonigle, over the sniffling of sorrow inside the church. “We did not choose the time and place when we came into this world and in most cases, we do not choose the time and place in which we leave this world.”

But, said Father McGonigle, a friend of the Paganos and 1 of 17 white-robed clergy crowded onto the altar, “God knows how to bring good even out of tragedy itself.”

Like Christ himself, “Jim Pagano was a man who sought to be a source of life, love and support for his family, his friends and his neighbors and the firefighters with whom he shared the task of protecting lives and property.”

Pagano “would have laid down his life for another,” the priest said, “because he cherished the gift of life.”

In this same church Pagano had been baptized, confirmed and received his First Communion. In so doing, said Father McGonigle, he had entered into the “pastoral mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection” and the belief in eternal life.

“We live in tumultuous, challenging and sometimes tragic times where we continually strive to find the strength to keep going, to keep believing… .”

“Jim is one of those very special people who God calls, like Christ, to enter into the mystery of laying down his life for others… . He can now reach out in ways that transcend all our earthly understanding and continue to be present in those he loved and cherished in his lifetime and continue to watch over and guide them as they make their life journeys.”

Loudspeakers at the church doors pumped the priest’s words outside for those standing listening. In a few minutes they would watch the funeral procession trail off down the street, headed for St. Ann Cemetery. But first it would pass slowly by Fire Station Three, where Pagano worked for 15 years.

In the warm sunshine outside the church, Ken Brown and the other members of the bagpipes and drums corps waited.

Just last week, the same corps, the Rhode Island Professional Firefighters Pipes and Drums, had played at the promotions ceremony where Pagano had been promoted to lieutenant.

“And now,” said Brown, “we’re here.”

With reports by staff writer Amanda Milkovits

tmooney@projo.com