'Friendly Fire' Eyed in Death of ATF Agent

Authorities are investigating whether friendly fire killed a hero ATF agent trying to stop a drug-addled ex-con from robbing a Long Island pharmacy, sources told The Post.

Officials said off-duty Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Agent John Capano, 51, a married father of two teens, was trying to foil a stickup at Charlie's Family Pharmacy in Seaford on Saturday when a retired Nassau County police lieutenant and off-duty NYPD cop in a nearby deli heard there was a robbery in progress and the two armed men ran over.

Within seconds, Capano and career thug James McGoey, 43, lay dead outside the drugstore amid bottles of stolen pills.

The fatal chain of events occurred after McGoey entered the pharmacy with a handgun in his waistband at 1:54 p.m. and demanded drugs and cash, according to authorities.

"He demanded they give him all the Opana they had, as well as the cash in the cash register," a law-enforcement source said.

Opana is a brand name for oxymorphone, a highly addictive narcotic painkiller.

Around the same time, the unsuspecting Capano was entering the store from the back, leaving his wife and son in the car to wait as he picked up his elderly father's cancer medication.

"I said, 'I'm going down to get a prescription.' He said, 'Well, I'm going down to Charlie's, so I'll get it,' " recalled Capano's heartbroken dad, James J. Capano, 82, as he stood outside the pharmacy at 3931 Merrick Road yesterday.

"I should have gone," said the former NYPD detective, who suffers from prostate cancer and had just lost his wife, John's mother, to cancer on Dec. 17.

Once his son, a fearless 23-year ATF veteran, saw McGoey holding up the store, he instinctively drew his weapon, a law-enforcement source said.

"He reached for his sidearm and engaged Mr. McGoey," the source said, adding that the perp then moved toward the front door, his gun drawn and his pockets stuffed with cash and drugs.

At the same time, two women who had witnessed the robbery ran to the deli, which is owned by the family of retired Nassau County police Lt. Chris Garaghty, 54.

Garaghty sprang into action, rushing to the scene with Joseph Abria, a 29-year-old off-duty NYPD cop who was also at the deli.

It was unclear how many shots were fired and whose bullet killed Capano during the ensuing mayhem just outside the drugstore's front door.

Sources indicated that McGoey was wielding only a realistic-looking pellet gun.

Hearing the commotion, the victim's wife and 18-year-old son rushed to the front of the pharmacy to witness the horrific aftermath.

Neither Abria nor Garaghty have spoken to investigators yet, sources said.

Nassau County police were joined at the scene yesterday by investigators from the ATF, FBI and DEA. It's unclear if there was any surveillance video of the incident available.

James Capano said his son - an explosives expert who had volunteered to train US and allied troops in Iraq and Afghanistan - never backed away from trouble.

"He never walked away from anything. He always got involved,'' said the elderly Capano, affectionately known as "the mayor of Seaford" for his daily strolls along Merrick Road.

"You know, you can't walk away,'' the dad added sadly. "If you're on the job, you're a policeman and someone's in trouble, you've got to help them."

He said that the family had been planning to go to his son's house to celebrate New Year's Eve.

"We spent all the holidays together," the dad said. "John would give you the shirt off his back. He would run across the street to help an old lady.''

Greg Rosati, 52, a friend of the victim's from high school, noted the irony of his pal's death.

"He was in Afghanistan, in Iraq, defusing bombs. Then he comes home, gets his father's prescription and gets killed. It's like a movie," Rosati said, adding, "He was a man's man. A hero."

US Rep. Peter King, a Seaford resident, said he knows the family well.

"My wife, Rosemary, taught John in the fourth-grade at Seaford Avenue School. He was like the Tom Sawyer of Seaford - a 'lovable devil,' she called him, always into something," King said.

"She could never get mad at him. He had the best personalty in the class." At the Capano family home yesterday, relatives gathered to comfort his widow, son and daughter, 16. Colleagues described Capano as a dedicated agent. "He was a well-respected, competent, aggressive, hardworking agent," said Rory O'Connor, an ATF agent in the New York office.

By contrast, the pill-popping McGoey had spent nearly half his life in state prisons on armed-robbery charges - including a drugstore robbery in Brookhaven in 1990 in which his accomplice screamed, "Give us the money or we'll blow you away!" at a store manager, according to records and reports at the time.

The junkie creep was paroled from Attica on Aug. 18 after serving 10 years of a 10- to 12-year sentence for armed robbery in Suffolk in 2001.

In between state prison stints, he was down in Florida, where records show he had a slew of bad-check-writing arrests on charges that were dismissed.

Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton, Jeane MacIntosh and C.J. Sullivan

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Anatomy of a tragedy

1. Thug ex-con James McGoey enters Charlie's Family Pharmacy at 3931 Merrick Road in Seaford armed with a realistic-looking pellet pistol, approaches the prescription-drug counter in the rear of the store and announces a stickup, demanding cash and drugs.

2. Unsuspecting off-duty ATF Agent John Capano, 51, enters the drugstore from a back entrance to pick up cancer medicine for his father, spots the robbery in progress, pulls his service weapon and pursues McGoey, 43, out the front door.

3. Two women who witness the robbery run to the Seaford Deli at 3925 Merrick Road, where off-duty NYPD cop Joseph Abria, 29, is having lunch and retired Nassau County police Lt. Chris Garaghty, 54, is an owner.

4. The off-duty city cop and retired lieutenant run outside toward the pharmacy, where they see Capano (inset) and McGoey. Shots are fired, according to the preliminary investigation, and Capano and McGoey suffer fatal wounds.