Nicole Hanson tells the court that she and her boyfriend were driving by police headquarters when she saw Esteban Carpio escape through a window.

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 14, 2006

BY GREGORY SMITH
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- At about midnight on April 16, 2005, Nicole Hanson and her boyfriend Nathan Fiero were driving by the Providence Public Safety Complex when she noticed something strange.

She heard the sound of breaking glass and then shards of glass seemed to be falling from the sky.

Hanson looked up and saw a figure illuminated in an upper-story window of the building. He seemed to be pushing pieces of glass out of a window frame with his hands. Then he climbed out of the window, hung from the window sill and dropped to the ground.

Unknown to Hanson at that moment, she was witness to one of the more unsettling events in Providence in recent years: Esteban Carpio was escaping from police headquarters, having just shot to death Detective Sgt. James L. Allen.

Hanson recalled her unusual experience for a Superior Court jury yesterday. Carpio, 27, a Boston native and onetime barber, is being tried on a charge that he murdered Allen with Allen's own gun, as well ason three other charges.

Through his lawyer, Carpio has admitted killing Allen and stabbing an elderly woman from the North End of the city, but he contends that he is not guilty of the charges because he was insane at the time.

After shooting Allen, he used the detective's semiautomatic .40-caliber Beretta to shoot out a window and briefly get away, according to trial evidence. He left the gun behind on a metal grate beneath the window.

Both Hanson, 24, and Fiero are from East Cheshire, Conn., and as they drove south on Service Road No. 7 between the Public Safety Complex and Route 95, she did not know that the building contained police headquarters.

Hanson, gesturing, told the court what she saw next.

"He hit the ground and instantly got right up," she recalled. "He began striding" past their car, walked across the Washington Street overpass and "jumped" over a fence or a railing on the east side of 95. Fiero slowed their car so she could keep looking. Police cars began to gather.

"I said, 'He just jumped. Here's the cops.' "

Assistant Attorney General Paul F. Daly Jr., the prosecutor, played for the jury a 45-minute digital recording of the police and rescue emergency radio traffic that night. It was apparent that a confusing, frenzied chase was on. One of their brother officers was down, and the city police were anxious to find the culprit.

Even though police cruisers converged in the vicinity of headquarters as Hanson saw Carpio lope away, it would be nearly an hour before the police would be able to find and apprehend the suspect.

The irony was that Carpio had not been under arrest before he shot his way out of headquarters, and he had been free to leave any time he wanted.

Although he had been brought from his house in the North End to headquarters in handcuffs as a safety precaution, according to the police, the cuffs were removed and Carpio was given a seat in a conference room rather than the interrogation room. Detective Frank Villella told Carpio that he was not under arrest, Detective Timothy C. McGann testified previously.

McGann said that he and other detectives chatted up Carpio and offered him drinks of water, trying to keep him occupied until Allen, who was the lead investigator in the stabbing, could come into the conference room in the detective bureau and question Carpio about that incident.

Carpio had been told, according to testimony, only that the police were investigating an accident possibly involving a red van for which Carpio had co-signed a short-term lease.

At one point Carpio asked McGann, "Can I leave?" McGann said he responded by asking the suspect to do the police a favor and wait to answer some questions.

Carpio replied, "OK," according to McGann.

Neither the stabbing victim, Madeline Gatta, 84, nor her neighbor, Kristina Gruslin, could identify the man who had attacked Gatta. He had been driving a red van, they said, which had been traced to Carpio. But detectives had not found any incriminating evidence in the van.

McGann said he asked Allen if he wanted to have Carpio arrested. No, Allen answered, we do not have enough evidence, McGann has testified. McGann said Carpio could have left if he wanted to.

Robert L. Sheketoff, Carpio's lawyer, has told the jury that Carpio is "seriously mentally ill," suffers from paranoia and thought disorder, and has been determined by psychiatrists to be psychotic.

A psychosis, according to Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary, is a major mental disorder characterized by personality derangement and a loss of contact with reality. A psychosis often is accompanied by delusions and hallucinations.

Yesterday, there was testimony, too, from Providence Sgt. Kenneth Vinacco, Providence Detective Sgt. Vincent Mansolillo, state police Trooper Derek Borek and FBI special agent Justin Bowers. The latter two helped to apprehend Carpio in front of a Roger Williams University building at 150 Washington St., several blocks from headquarters.

Michael R. Crugnale, of Cranston, who was a driver/dispatcher for Yellow Cab, also took the stand. As the search began for Carpio, the police quickly notified taxicab companies to be on the lookout and began checking mass transit points.

A woman who so far has not been identified publicly made a call to Yellow for Carpio and said he had $500 and wanted to go to New York City or Boston. Crugnale was dispatched to the vicinity of the arts center AS220 at 107 Empire St. downtown, but he testified yesterday that the dispatcher told him that a police detective had been shot and he should "be careful."

Crugnale said, "Something didn't seem right to me." On the way to meet his fare, he stopped at a police roadblock and informed an officer that he suspected his fare was the man who shot the detective. The officer told Crugnale to go ahead and that he would follow in his cruiser.

Crugnale drove to the intersection of Empire and Washington streets and parked.

"Then I seen a gentleman walking up toward the cab, looking at the cab," Crugnale said. The man looked inside. Crugnale said he saw cruisers with flashing lights coming close and he heard sirens.

"He turned and ran down Washington Street," said Crugnale.

Moments later Bowers and Providence Patrolman Scott Petrocchi tackled Carpio to the sidewalk.

gsmith@projo.com / (401) 277-7334