A Providence police investigation into a stabbing turns deadly, unleashing chaos as officers chase and capture the man they accuse of killing a beloved detective.

07:03 PM EDT on Sunday, April 24, 2005

BY MARK ARSENAULT, AMANDA MILKOVITS and TOM MOONEY
Journal Staff Writers

PROVIDENCE -- With an overhand blow, the stranger stabbed the 83-year-old woman between the shoulder blades.

He left Madeline Gatta in the street, in front of her house. He didn't bother to take her purse before running to a red minivan. He drove up hilly Swift Street in the city's north end, turned right on Argol, and vanished.

Next door to Gatta's apartment building, her neighbor Kristina Gruslin noted the van's plate.

Rhode Island: RY-744.

Two Providence patrolmen arrived in separate cars to the neighborhood of single-family homes and small apartment buildings, neat little lawns, and kids playing kickball in the streets.

A rescue crew examined the gash on Gatta's back. It did not look life-threatening.

Gruslin told the police she had seen the man pacing in front of Gatta's apartment house, at 90 Swift St. The stranger looked to be in his 20s. His hair was short. He wore jeans and a dark jacket on this Saturday afternoon, breezy and in the mid-50s.

Gatta told the police that the man had approached her and asked for directions -- to a street that did not even exist.

She had come closer to answer him, and he stabbed her.

He took nothing. He just fled.

The rescue truck took Gatta to the emergency room.

Providence Police Chief Dean M. Esserman took a call from his commander about the Gatta stabbing. The viciousness of the attack -- and that the perpetrator had driven off without taking the elderly woman's purse -- was unsettling.

A dangerous person was on the street, the chief thought. And if he attacked once, he would do it again.

Esserman ordered the detectives to pull out all the stops to track him down.

PROVIDENCE POLICE Detective James L. Allen, the 50-year-old son of a retired police captain, was scheduled to end his shift at 4 p.m.

He was a quiet, soft-spoken detective who worked the East Side, driving to calls with what other detectives considered an irritating stop-and-go style behind the wheel. He wore a trench coat, which covered the way his shirttail would come untucked, and he had earned the nickname Rain Man for his savant-like ability to remember dates and numbers and arcane bits of information.

After 27 years on the streets, Allen would blush at off-color jokes. He was a devout Catholic who lived in Johnston with his wife, Marguerite, and two daughters, Jennifer, 15, and Caitlin, 14.

And on that Saturday afternoon, April 16, he did what he often did for the job. He agreed to work late, after going home for dinner, to help with the stabbing case.

The police alerted patrols to watch for the suspect's red van. At 5:30 p.m., detectives working the case -- Allen, Emilio Matos Jr. and Charles P. Boranian -- spoke with Gatta in the Rhode Island Hospital emergency room.

Matos and Boranian knocked on doors throughout Gatta's neighborhood.

Detectives traced the van's registration to Sensible Car Rental, 61 Gooding Ave., in Bristol. Over the phone, the company told the police that the 2003 Dodge was rented to Samein Phin and her boyfriend, Esteban Carpio.

CARPIO, 26, had a suspended Rhode Island driver's license, and his Massachusetts license had been revoked. He had a criminal record -- a violent one -- spanning five years, with at least 20 charges, most of which had been dismissed.

Those charges included pointing a pistol to a woman's head in Boston and demanding money. They included allegations that he twice had beaten the mother of his child, in Providence. She never testified and the charges were dropped.

Most recently, Carpio had been arrested, last November, in Brookline, Mass., on drug charges. The arresting officer had noted: "When I was talking to Carpio I noticed his lips were moving from side to side and he was unable to stop grinding his teeth."

Allen and the other detectives learn Carpio's last listed address: an apartment in a three-decker in the Boston neighborhood of Roslindale.

THAT SATURDAY, hours after Gatta was stabbed, the police tracked down Carpio and Phin at their apartment at 70 Nashua St., less than a mile from the knife attack.

It was dark when detectives spoke to Phin outside the house. She persuaded Carpio to come out and go with the officers. He was calm when they cuffed his wrists and drove him to the Public Safety Complex for questioning in the detectives bureau on the third floor.

Phin followed shortly after, coming to the station with another detective.

At some point, the detectives removed the handcuffs; Carpio was not under arrest. Allen, Matos and Detective Timothy McGann took him into a third-floor conference room that also has a door into the corner office of Maj. Stephen Campbell.

Other detectives, some newly promoted, came inside to listen.

Carpio denied he had anything to do with the stabbing.

He also asked for water several times.

AROUND 11:30 Saturday night, Providence police Cmdr. Paul Kennedy woke his chief in his East Side home.

Kennedy reported that a man sitting in a car on Linwood Avenue had been shot in the head, at about 11:15 p.m. The man had survived, and was at Rhode Island Hospital.

During his two years as chief, Esserman has made a point of responding to every shooting in the city. Shortly before midnight, he headed for the hospital.

AT ABOUT midnight, Matos was in the detective squad area outside the conference room. The other detectives had gone to the Linwood Avenue shooting. McGann agreed to get Carpio another drink of water from the kitchen across the hall, leaving Allen and Carpio alone.

The door to the conference room slammed, locked.

From behind it came sounds of a struggle.

And then gunfire.

IN THE ADJACENT fire house, Deputy Assistant Chief J. Curtis Varone and a couple of the other firefighters who play together in a band lingered at midnight in the bays talking about an upcoming gig.

Police cruisers, lights flashing, pulled up to the station.

Around them officers sprinted with their guns drawn.

This can't be good, Varone thought.

The loudspeakers in the fire station crackled: Shooting at 325 Washington St.

325 Washington?

That was their building.

Firefighters on Engine 3 -- acting Lt. Joseph Dillon and firefighters Joseph Molis, Ron Smith and Steven Dulong -- ran down the stairs. They grabbed their medical equipment.

Dulong told them: Get your jackets. The police needed to recognize they were firefighters.

ESSERMAN HAD driven two blocks when his police radio erupted with urgent shouts:

All available cars report to headquarters!

We have someone down!

Headquarters is not secure!

Esserman was puzzled. He pulled to the side of Tabor Avenue to listen more carefully.

Why headquarters? Why not the hospital? Wasn't that where the Linwood Avenue victim was?

Then he realized the officers were talking about something new.

His worst nightmare.

Esserman banged a hard right turn and sped through the darkened streets, racing to headquarters. His radio blared: Security breached . . . Shots fired!

Esserman cut through downtown and up Washington Street toward the lighted glass of the Public Safety Complex. He crossed the bridge spanning Route 95, turned onto Dean Street and jumped the curb outside headquarters as police officers swarmed everywhere.

Esserman ran for the main door. Several officers stopped him by the flagpole.

"You can't go in," they told him. "It's not safe."

"What are you talking about?" Esserman said, pushing past them.

Firefighters and rescue crews filled the lobby. Esserman looked up into the atrium and saw police officers, guns drawn, moving on all three floors.

Esserman called Kennedy at the hospital.

"Get here now," the chief ordered. "All hell's broken loose."

WITH A battering ram from the narcotics division, officers bashed open the door to the conference room.

Detective Allen lay on the floor.

One of the windows in the adjoining office used by Major Campbell had been shot out, leaving a jagged hole.

Carpio was gone.

The drop from the window seemed an impossible jump -- 30 feet straight down to a metal grate set into concrete and a grassy slope near the highway.

No way he made that jump, the police thought. He's still in the building.

Esserman ran up the stairs as officers with shotguns and drawn pistols swept through the corridors and rooms -- shouting commands, smashing open locked doors -- checking every space for the gunman.

DEPARTMENT policy forbids firefighters to rush into a violent scene until it's secure. This one wasn't. They went anyway.

Four Engine 3 firefighters ran out of their station and into the atrium lobby. Officers escorted them, racing up to the third floor.

The firefighters felt no pulse in Allen. He wasn't breathing.

He had been shot twice -- in the chest and head.

Molis started chest compressions. Dulong fitted a mask over Allen's face with a bag that Smith used to squeeze air into his lungs.

The firefighters radioed back to Varone in the firehouse: The victim was a police officer.

Varone called back: Is the scene secure?

Stand by, he was told. And then: Yeah, come on up.

Varone and the rescue workers rushed into the atrium. Some of the firefighters ran up the stairs; Varone and the others took the stretcher toward the elevator.

A police officer ran by and yelled: "We don't know where the guy is! He's got a gun!"

THE RESCUE team lifted Allen onto the stretcher.

The detective's skin was ashen. Blood covered his head and chest.

Still uncertain whether Carpio was in the building, officers guarded the front and rear as they rushed Allen toward the elevator.

Firefighter James Okolowitcz rode the stretcher and pumped Allen's chest.

Rescue Lt. Michael Legault inserted an IV. Another squeezed the ventilation bag. Chief Esserman went with them. They crammed inside the elevator. One of the firefighters handed Esserman the bag. The chief pumped air into Allen's lungs as the elevator dropped.

Varone and the other firefighters milled in the third-floor atrium, waiting for a second elevator. Firefighter Bonnie Benson pulled out her cell phone and called the Rhode Island Hospital emergency room. She was gesturing, talking about Allen's condition, when Varone heard shouts. "Don't move! Don't move!"

Police officers on the first floor were pointing guns up at them.

ALLEN HAD not regained consciousness.

From the back of the ambulance, Esserman called Mayor David Cicilline and his chief of staff, Mike Mello.

The mayor had been at a bar mitzvah at Gillette Stadium. He was expecting some kind of bad news: on the ride back, his police driver had received word of an emergency at the police station. The mayor had hurried into his house, shed his tuxedo for a pair of jeans and waited for a call.

He headed for the emergency room.

OUTSIDE THE Public Safety Complex, Varone and the firefighters watched police officers set up a perimeter around their own building.

Dozens of flashing police cars surrounded the building. Officers darted everywhere -- inside and out, running in packs.

Maj. Paul Fitzgerald consoled one officer.

The police found Allen's .40-caliber Beretta on the ground below the broken window.

A TRAUMA TEAM of doctors and nurses awaited Allen's arrival inside the newly opened emergency room at Rhode Island Hospital.

Esserman followed his detective into one of six critical-care rooms, while the firefighters who had worked on him watched through the door.

Despite their efforts, a doctor declared Allen dead at 12:29 a.m.

Hospital staff wheeled Allen to a small private room with just enough space for a few people to stand around the stretcher. Esserman helped a nurse spread a white sheet over Allen's body and a towel over his head wound.

Esserman called Kennedy, his deputy chief, at the station, where the hunt was still on for Carpio. He told him the news: Jimmy did not survive.

Fitzgerald drove to Johnston to tell Allen's wife of 17 years that her husband was dead. Kennedy drew the equally grim task of informing Allen's parents.

Cicilline arrived and Esserman, by Allen's side, broke the news.

The mayor asked, "Does he have any kids?"

YELLOW CAB taxi driver Michael Crugnale dropped off a passenger on Broadway at about 12:40 a.m. and headed for the Providence Biltmore hotel downtown to await his next fare.

Soon after, the voice of his dispatcher, Kay, came across the radio: There's a guy outside AS220 on Empire Street looking for a ride. But be careful.

She told Crugnale that about 20 minutes earlier, another driver reported that police officers were buzzing around Kennedy Plaza, showing cabbies a picture of a man they said had just shot a cop.

Now this call for a man who seemed like he just wanted to get out of town.

The call to Yellow Cab had come from a woman who placed the call for the man. He originally said he wanted to go to Boston and had $500 cash. Then he changed his mind and said New York.

Crugnale, 40, had driven for Yellow Cab for almost nine years. He knew some fares you just don't let in your cab. This sounded like one.

As he drove toward downtown on Broadway, he saw a police cruiser blocking a road leading to the police station. Crugnale pulled over.

"I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure . . . that the guy you're looking for is calling me to go to New York City."

The officers radioed the information, sending scores of officers toward Empire Street.

The officers told Crugnale to continue toward the bar as planned -- and lock his doors.

DOWN ON Empire Street, Brown University student Adelaida Vasquez and several friends listened to karaoke in Muldowney's Pub, next to the arts center and bar AS220.

The two venues share the same recessed doorway.

The friends were clustered around a table close to the disc jockey when Brown student Lia Davis saw someone race into the pub and then out through a back door.

Seconds later, at least a half dozen police officers wearing jackets with "Gang Unit" on their backs, burst through the front door, shouting:

"MOVE!"

"MOVE!"

"MOVE!"

The officers pushed through the crowd. They looked upset.

The music stopped and the scene grew more strange.

The DJ got up, followed the police officers out the back door, only to return, rummage through one of his silver equipment boxes and pull out a pistol. The armed DJ then raced out the back door again.

Vasquez and her friends assumed he was a cop.

OUTSIDE, CABBIE Crugnale stopped at the red light at the intersection of Empire and Washington streets and witnessed an incredible sight.

Running down every sidewalk, emerging from every alley, were dozens and dozens of police officers with guns drawn.

Then Crugnale saw a man sprint down Washington Street toward Kennedy Plaza. The first to catch him -- beneath the blue awning of Roger Williams University -- were Providence Patrolman Scott Petrocchi, partnered with FBI agent Justin Bowers, and state Troopers Chris Zarrella and Derek Borek. Others soon followed.

Blood spilled onto the brick sidewalk.

The police would say later that Carpio fought violently.

One Providence police sergeant jumped on the pile of officers trying to subdue and handcuff Carpio.

He's my prisoner! the sergeant shouted.

AT THE hospital, Esserman and Cicilline stood quietly with Allen's body, and waited for his family. Esserman rubbed the slain detective's shoulder.

News that Allen's alleged killer had been captured reached the chief about 1 a.m.

In the hallway, colleagues lined up to say farewell. Emergency-room nurses set out coffee and juice and offered them hugs.

Allen's wife and his parents, Lloyd and Jacqueline, arrived at about the same time, driven there by the officers who delivered the sad news. Allen's two brothers, Daniel and John, came, too.

Cicilline hugged Marguerite Allen. He told her everyone was grateful for the kind of detective Jimmy Allen had been.

He told her: I'm very, very sorry.

CHIEF ESSERMAN was still beside Allen's body when officers brought Carpio into the trauma center, where doctors an hour earlier had worked on Allen.

Gatta was recovering from the stabbing in another hospital room, to be released on Monday.

The chief ordered that Carpio was not to be left alone. He posted four officers and a supervisor with the prisoner.

The order had two purposes. Carpio had already shown a propensity to flee. And Esserman wanted to protect him in case anyone was tempted to seek his own justice.

After Allen's family and fellow officers paid their respects, Esserman went down the hall to see Carpio. Detectives were questioning Carpio. A doctor treated his injuries.

Esserman noticed one of Carpio's eyes was bloody and swelling. He saw cuts on the prisoner's forehead near his hairline. Carpio's hand bled.

It was three or four in the morning when Esserman returned to the Public Safety Complex and asked detectives, who were then processing the crime scene, to walk him through what happened.

Carpio also returned to headquarters later that morning for booking. Esserman went down to the detention center to watch.

The same sergeant who had supervised Carpio's guardianship at the hospital walked him in by the arm.

Carpio was placed alone in a holding cell with a camera pointed at him.

Esserman asked the Department of Corrections to pick up Carpio at police headquarters -- an unprecedented request as far as the prison was concerned. In most cases police officers transport a suspect.

The prison sent five correctional officers, a nurse and a deputy warden to police headquarters. Corrections officials knew Carpio had jumped out a third-floor window, and wanted to ensure he had been properly treated at the hospital for his injuries before accepting him into their custody.

The prison transport team took photographs of Carpio before leaving police headquarters and then again when they reached the state prison.

The purpose, a corrections department spokeswoman would later say, "was to show that obviously nothing happened in transport."

The FBI is leading an investigation into whether the police used excessive force when they captured Carpio.

ON A TYPICAL day in Chief Judge Albert E. DeRobbio's courtroom, sheriffs won't tolerate anyone standing. Either find a seat or leave.

But on Monday, when sheriffs brought Carpio into District Court to face a murder charge, Providence police officers stood lining the back wall of the courtroom.

As sheriffs led Carpio handcuffed and shackled into the court, one woman screamed: "Look what they did to him!"

Bruises and stitched cuts marked Carpio's forehead. Swelling reduced his eyes to mere slits. Droplets of blood dripped onto a white plastic mask that covered his nose and lower face -- a "spit shield" corrections officials had placed on him to be sure Carpio could not spit blood at the sheriffs who transported him.

"Stevie, tell them not guilty!" shouted Carpio's mother, Yvonne, as sheriffs pulled her from her seat and ordered other relatives to leave. "Steven, tell them police brutality!"

DeRobbio ordered Carpio held without bail.

As sheriffs led Carpio from the room, his girlfriend, Phin, shouted out: "I love you, baby!"

"I love you, too, Ma," Carpio called back, his words muffled, using his nickname for Phin. These were the only words he spoke in court.

Carpio's family and his girlfriend told the media that Carpio had been spiraling toward a mental breakdown, that they had tried to get him mental help several times in recent months, but he had refused treatment. Phin said he was hearing voices, seeing things and muttering to himself.

On the morning of the stabbing, Phin said, she called a Providence mental health agency seeking help for Carpio but was told to bring him in on Monday.

Phin said that on the afternoon Gatta was attacked, Carpio had waited inside the rented red van outside a Chelo's restaurant, while Phin had lunch with an acquaintance. That restaurant is less than two-tenths of a mile from Gatta's apartment.

ALLEN WAS promoted after death to detective sergeant.

Thousands of his commrades came for his wake on Wednesday and his funeral Thursday.

Thousands more lined the streets to watch Allen's flag-draped casket slowly pass by on a horse-drawn caisson, behind a marching river of men and women in blue.

During his eulogy in St. Thomas Church, Allen's lifelong parish, Deputy Chief Kennedy said the department lost one of its greatest guardians: "No one doubts this unspeakable tragedy will make us stronger."

After the graveyard prayers at St. Ann Cemetery, in Cranston, after the rifle salute and the traditional "last call" over the police radio, a cruiser blared its siren and drove off into the distance.

Chief Esserman stayed with the casket after the thousands of mourners had left. He watched cemetery workers cover the coffin with fresh loam. He stood alone at the foot of the grave and saluted.

Three miles away, Esteban Carpio sat alone in prison.

If he is convicted, he might never leave.

With staff reports from Cathleen F. Crowley and Gregory Smith