The family of New York Police Officer Paul Heidelberger, just 28 when he was murdered execution-style in 1992, is outraged at the impending release of his killer on parole.
"When he walks out of the prison gates, will my brother walk in and say, 'Hey, I'm home?'" Heidelberger's older sister Anne Fullam told the New York Post.
"No. My brother's never coming home."
Patrick Bannon, 56, sentenced 30 years to life, will be the 38th New York cop-killer released since 2017 amid Democrats' prison and criminal-justice reform when he is freed this month by the New York parole board, according to the post.
"This man, supposedly, has a child," Fullam told the Post. "Paul never got the chance to be a father."
Bannon was 25 years old when he walked up to Heidelberger and shot him in the head after Heidelberger helped break up a nightclub fight at the club Bannon was serving at as a bouncer July 18, 1992.
"He came back and picked up my brother by his hair and shot him again in the head while Paul was pleading for his life and saying he's a cop," Fullam told the Post in tears. "And every time I think about that, it's just, it's extremely hard for me."
"I had hoped he would never, ever get out because of the way he killed my brother."
Critics of the parole board's decision point to the 2017 activist- and lobbyist-pushed reforms that consider the inmates prison record more than the initial crime, according to the Post.
"No sane New Yorker supports the release of this barbaric cop-killer, but the parole board does, because they value a murderer's life more than the life of a hero police officer," PBA President Patrick Hendry told the Post.
Hendry warned of even further reforms in the works would "further weaken the parole standards."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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