‘Daddy, don’t be a police officer anymore’

http://worcestermag.com/2016/05/25/43044/43044


It’s a photo that has been shared thousands of times online. A photo of a young boy almost limp in a police officer’s arms outside Morin Funeral Home in Leciester, where the body of slain Auburn Police Officer Ron Tarentino Jr. was brought late Sunday afternoon, May 22.

The image was photographed by Worcester Magazine photographer Steven King, who has been named Photographer of the Year two years in a row by the New England Newspaper & Press Association. I had called Steve Sunday morning, telling him, “I need you.” News of Tarentino’s death, allegedly at the hands of Jorge Zambrano, was spreading like wildfire.Later in the day, the media learned Tarentino’s body, which had been in Boston for an autopsy, was being brought to Leicester, where he lived, to a funeral home to be prepared for burial. I asked Steven to go there and wait.

The reception given to the motorcade that included the hearse carrying Tarentino’s body was nothing less than amazing. In the middle of it all, Steve saw a young boy run toward a police officer outside the funeral home. Steve did as he done countless times over his career – he snapped a photograph.The resulting image was posted online at worcestermagazine.com and on our Facebook page, the photo has since been shared state- and countrywide.

TV news outlets have used it, thousands have viewed it on Facebook – someone even posted it to the Facebook page of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.”What many have been wondering and asking is: “Who was the little boy?” and “Was he Tarentino’s son?”Worcester Magazine has since learned the back story, and it is gut-wrenching.No, the boy is not Tarentino’s son.

According to Auburn Police Chief Andrew Sluckis, young Camden is the son of the police officer hugging in him in the photo, longtime Auburn Officer Keith Chipman.The boy, Sluckis said, had just realized why he was there and that Tarentino had been killed. The boy and his father had been friends with Tarentino. The boy ran to his father, and as he hugged him, Camden pleaded with his father, “Daddy, please don’t be a police officer anymore.”