Shot Mass. Officer Regains Motion in Leg, Arm
The Beverly cop who cheated death at the hand of a Hamilton police officer is slowly regaining movement in the arm and leg after he was shot twice Friday night, a fellow officer said yesterday, as Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett reversed course and announced that he will investigate the motive for the tragedy after all.
Wounded officer Jason Lantych, 36, is slowly recovering from the as-yet-unexplained attack outside a Route 1A Starbucks by Sgt. Kenneth Nagy, 43, who later shot himself.
"We visited him today in the hospital. He's talking. It looks like he's getting motion back in his hand and his leg. It's certainly positive, but I think he has a long way to go," Beverly police spokesman David Costa said of Lantych.
Lantych's family asked for privacy in a statement, saying "the past 72 hours have been extremely difficult." Nagy relatives have not been available for comment.
Officials have not released any explanation for the attack.
Blodgett's spokeswoman, Carrie Kimball Monahan, told the Herald on Sunday in repeated conversations that their office wouldn't pursue Nagy's motives because he was dead, making it "moot" and "not relevant." Yesterday, she sought to "clarify" her remarks, saying, "I meant only that motive was not relevant to any criminal prosecution of Sgt. Nagy, since Sgt. Nagy's death made any such prosecution moot." Motive, she said, is still relevant "to the broader investigation." which is ongoing, Christopher Loh, a spokesman for Attorney General Martha Coakley, called Blodgett's reversal yesterday "the right decision."
Deborah Crosbie, an off-duty nurse who helped save Lantych, told the Herald the groin-shot cop told her only that Nagy had "a couple reasons" to hurt him. It remains unclear how they knew each other.
Georgia Marcos at Nick's Famous Roast Beef, a cop hangout in Beverly, said both men were regulars, but she never saw them together. Nagy's wife, Katie, 32, a mother of two young boys, is an advocate with the Beverly police domestic violence unit. Asked if she and Lantych know each other, Costa said, "She works for the department, he works for the department. So obviously, they would have some interaction, but other than that, we don't really know."
Nagy reportedly was Hamilton's top 2010 wage earner at $125,945 -- $53,000 of it from overtime and detail work. Hamilton Town Manager Michael Lombardo said he was unaware of any disciplinary issues: "I always found him to be very collegial and very professional."
Lantych, before his close call with death, had a lucky moment when he won a $1,000 lottery ticket with a one-in-45,000 chance in a yet-to-be-held grand prize drawing for $20 million. If he wins that, his 2008 divorce deal stipulates his ex-wife gets half.
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