Tearful friends and family gathered yesterday to bid farewell to a Long Island teen who was gunned down in a driveway – allegedly by the father of a rival he had argued with after a party gone awry.
More than 600 people gathered at the rain-dampened funeral of Daniel Cicciaro, 17, in Medford – several of whom sported fresh tattoos in remembrance of their friend “Dano.”
“I can’t really believe that he is gone,” said Cicciaro’s girlfriend, Jessica Herbert, whose new tattoo read “Dano My Angel,” inked beneath a winged cherub. “I don’t want to go through this pain.”
“I am just grateful for the time I had with him,” she added.
After the tear-filled ceremony, friends and family defended the white teen against allegations he had uttered racial epithets at his black attacker before he was shot in Miller Place – calling them utterly false.
“This incident had no racial overtones whatsoever. That’s a ploy from the [defendant’s] attorney,” said Cicciaro’s godfather, Gregg Sarra.
Most of those gathered focused on their memories of the teen as a driven young man who loved his family and working on cars.
“My son was a very loving, caring kid. It’s devastating to the family. His loss is a hole that can’t be filled, a hole in the family’s heart,” said his heartbroken father, Daniel Cicciaro Sr.
The incident has revived simmering racial tensions that have roiled central Suffolk County in recent years – such as clashes between locals and migrant workers in nearby Farmingville.
Cicciaro, of Port Jefferson Station, was killed last Wednesday. Police say he confronted 19-year-old Aaron White in his family’s driveway to defend the honor of a girlfriend who claimed White had made threats against her.
According to Suffolk County police, the altercation began after White was asked to leave a party in Sound Beach when the woman told friends he had made her uncomfortable.
White left without incident, but once he was gone, the girl told friends he had threatened her in an Internet chat room months earlier, cops said.
That sent Cicciaro into a rage, and he began calling White on his cellphone and arguing with him, they said.
The calls got so heated that Cicciaro and some friends decided to drive over to White’s house in Miller Place – a mostly white suburb on the North Shore – to confront him, police said.
Once there, White and his father, John White, 53, emerged carrying guns and the elder White ordered the boys off his property, police said.
The argument escalated, and John White fired a single shot into Cicciaro’s face, killing him, cops said.
White’s attorney has said Cicciaro and his friends used racial slurs during the altercation, an accusation the teen’s friends and family have strenuously denied.
Ian Codrington, 19, a black friend of Cicciaro’s from Newfield HS, called the charges “crap.”
“Dano was an excellent person. That stuff about race is a load of crap. He didn’t have a racist bone in his body,” he said.
He added that attempts to paint the rapidly expanding community as racially intolerant were way off the mark.
“This kind of thing doesn’t happen here. We are all shocked. This murder is hanging over this town,” he said.