The Committee on Public Integrity Calls On District Attorney to Appoint Special Prosecutor Over Cop's Injury Investigation - December 20, 2011
Cries of a cover-up have followed the tragic November 15, 2011 serious injury of respected Pelham Manor Police Officer Michael Tillistrand and have left numerous calls on Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore to appoint a Special Prosecutor over the pending investigation. As reported in the November 17, 2011 edition of the Westchester County Journal News, Officer Tillistrand was hit and seriously injured during a routine traffic stop on Boston Post Road in the small village of Pelham Manor. While the accident was widely reported, it took days before The Journal News uncovered that the driver of the vehicle that hit Officer Tillistrand was the daughter of the Village of Pelham Manor Fire Chief, Joseph Ruggiero. The 28-year-old Tillistrand was admitted to Jacobi Hospital with life-threatening head injuries, made tremendous progress, and is currently in Helen Hayes, a Rockland County Rehabilitation facility.
The Journal News reported on November 16, 2011, that the Pelham Manor Police had declined to comment "...about the status of the investigation until the chief came in at 10 a.m." Reporter James O'Rourke noted in his story that, "A silver coupe was covered by a tarp, perhaps to preserve evidence as it rained," and that, "A county police accident investigator said at the accident scene that the officer who was struck had been assisting another officer who was writing a citation for the driver of a stopped car." However, details pertaining to driver Jillian Ruggiero's texting-while-driving activity at the time she allegedly drove into Officer Tillistrand have been, it is alleged, kept secret. In addition to the apparent conflict of the Pelham Manor Police investigating the actions of the daughter of the Pelham Manor Fire Chief, there's more.
In a bizarre series of events that left administrators at Jacobi Hospital frantic, the Pelham Manor Village Manager, John Pierpont and his wife apparently appeared to visit the injured Tillistrand shortly after he was admitted. It is reported that Mrs. Pierpont, a nurse associated with Sound Shore Hospital in New Rochelle, began reviewing Officer Tillistrand's medical charts. Mr. and Mrs. John Pierpont were allegedly escorted out of the hospital and banned from visiting the critically injured Tillistrand at Jacobi Hospital.
The Pelham Manor Village Manager, John Pierpont, is not new to controversy. In an article believed to be from October of 1997, the local Town of Pelham newspaper, The Pelham Weekly, headlined an article, "Pierpont: No Comment On Mount Kisco Case." It was reported that Mr. Pierpont had, "no comment on a Westchester County district attorney's inquiry in a Mount Kisco case," noting that, "Pierpont was village manager in Mount Kisco until two years ago." The focus of the District Attorney's investigation was, "whether a crime was committed regarding computer equipment which was unaccounted for when a recent inventory was taken." The article quoted the Mount Kisco police as saying that, "the items [had been] returned."
In the Village of Pelham Manor, the Village Manager is the highest public official.
Focus Turns to Administrator John Pierpont's Corrupting of the Police
Department
-
The Village of Pelham Manor Administrator, John Pierpont, is in the hot
seat again as the focus of various investigations point to him as the
driving force...
9 years ago