TERRYVILLE — The public wake for Police Officer Alex Hamzy, killed last week in an apparent ambush, is set to begin at noon Wednesday.
The wake will be held at the Lyceum Banquet Hall on Main Street in the Terryville section of Plymouth until 8 p.m. State police said law enforcement will close off the road, and that visitors should park at the Terryville fair grounds and a shuttle will bring them over to pay their respects.
“The family is very adamant in that they want this to be a somber experience,” Bristol Mayor Jeff Caggiano said in a video posted to Facebook Tuesday. “Alex was a member of the Emergency Response Team and this is almost like military honors for them, and him lying in state.”
Caggiano said mourners will walk through during the wake, while the family will be in a separate area. The family has asked for no photography or “fanfare,” the mayor said, “just paying our final respects to a fallen hero.”
State police said Route 6 is closed from North Main Street to Route 72 for the remainder of the day. Local businesses will be accessible to patrons, but only by foot, state police said.
Plymouth schools will have an early dismissal Wednesday due to the road closure, and because the buses will be needed to shuttle people to the service, Superintendent Brian Falcone told parents in a message this week. School officials are also asking for students and staff to dress in blue on Friday, when a funeral is planned for the fallen officers.
State police said the road closure will not affect student bus service, or parents who need to pick up their children from the nearby Eli Terry Middle School, which sits near the intersection of Route 6 and North Main Street. Parents should “notify police officers when arriving,” state police said. Falcone said the school is dismissing at 11 a.m. Wednesday.
A private wake for Dustin DeMonte, 35, who was also killed in the shooting, is planned for Thursday in North Haven.
The public funeral for both men is planned for Friday at the Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field in East Hartford.
Hamzy’s obituary described him as “one in a million” whose “smile would light up a room.” Hamzy, “never turned down an opportunity to be there for the people he loved,” his family wrote in the obituary.
Hamzy, 34, and his wife were days away from celebrating their first wedding anniversary.
Police from surrounding communities formed a procession for Hamzy that led past the Bristol Police Department last Friday.
The shootings of DeMonte and Hamzy marked the first line-of-duty deaths in nearly 80 years in Bristol, a city of some 61,000 about 20 miles outside of Hartford. The last time a city police officer died in the line of service was on May 17, 1944, when Officer Ernest W. Schilke was killed by gas fumes following an explosion at a mill.
Hamzy, “was a very kind-hearted person,” Dan Slisz, a high school friend and EMT, recalled during the event. Hamzy was “always there to bring a smile to people’s faces, very almost comedian-like,” he said.
Hamzy’s father, Alex Hamzy Sr., described his son as a “patriot” and “an all-American” who always wanted to be a member of his hometown police department. Hamzy worked construction, ran his own landscaping business and worked shifts at his father’s restaurant, Crystal Diner, before a position with the Bristol Police Department opened in 2014. He was awarded a silver star two years later for separate incidents in which he arrested two suspected burglars and helped rescue a man in cardiac arrest.
A preliminary investigation report has revealed Hamzy and DeMonte were lured by a hoax 911 call reporting a domestic dispute at a Redstone Hill Road residence last Wednesday night. As Hamzy, DeMonte and Bristol Police Officer Alec Iurato ordered Nathan Brutcher out of the home, the man’s older brother, Nicholas, opened fire on the officers from behind, the report stated.
Hamzy and DeMonte were fatally shot in the head and torso, their autopsies showed. Iurato, 26, was also wounded as Nicholas Brutcher fired more than 80 rounds at the officers. Body cam footage showed Iurato managed to run around the back of the house and took cover behind a police cruiser before firing one lethal shot to Nicholas Brutcher’s neck, the investigation report stated.
Nathan Brutcher was also wounded during the incident, but authorities have not said who shot him. He was taken to St. Francis Hospital in Hartford where officials have declined to provide an update on his condition.
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