NY Police Mistakenly Tell Parents Their Son Is Dead

NY Police Mistakenly Tell Parents Their Son Is Dead
MASTIC BEACH, N.Y. (April 29) -- It was a 90-minute nightmare.

Alfred and Geri Esposito of Mastic Beach were told Saturday morning that their son Freddy and another passenger had been killed in a collision with a tractor-trailer on a Pennsylvania highway.

It turns out Freddy wasn't dead. He was asleep on a couch in an apartment he rents with his brother. The dead man was one of his former fraternity brothers -- a revelation that both relieved and upset the Espositos.


"Ninety minutes of my life I'll never get back," Geri Esposito said Thursday. "My husband, who is a very strong man, was reduced to a puddle."

The mix-up began when Pennsylvania troopers found Freddy Esposito's driver's license in the hands of one of the men killed in the wreck -- 18-year-old Paul Richards of Santa Cruz, Calif.

Older brother Chris Esposito was just starting his shift in Brooklyn as a New York Police Department officer when he got the call that his brother was dead. He left work and raced to the Bay Shore home he shared with his brother.

"He goes downstairs into his brother's apartment and he saw something on the couch," Geri Esposito recalled. After poking the lump a couple of times, his brother awoke from under the blanket.

"He screamed, 'You're dead, you're dead!'" Geri Esposito said of Chris.

And Freddy counters: "I'm sleeping."

NY Police Mistakenly Tell Parents Their Son Is Dead