A man determined to choose violence. A cop determined to live a good life
Apr 19, 2018Her boyfriend, Thomas Latanowich, had thrown her down and choked her when she told him she wanted to take him off the family cellphone plan, she told the dispatcher. When Officer Sean Gannon showed up with his partners, Latanowich was long gone — he’d slashed the woman’s tire and run off, she said. It was just one more alleged explosion of cruelty from a man who had seemed determined to choose violence since he was a teenager, and who had picked up a “kill or be killed” mentality as he cycled in and out of prison. Related LinksFuneral services for Yarmouth police Sergeant Sean Gannon heldOn this day, it was Gannon who arrived to calm the woman Latanowich had allegedly left shaken. Gannon was smart, handsome, and just married to the woman of his dreams. He had wanted to be a cop since he was a little boy drawing superheroes, and he was known for his restraint, his quiet but firm sense of right and wrong, and the gentle way he spoke to victims. Advertisement He searched for Latanowich, then requested a warrant for his arrest. His career was full of calls like this, each one a chance to offer protection and comfort. He was on his way to great things, the rest of the department agreed — he would be a chief somewhere for sure. But for now, he was happy on the street, where the good he did was immediate and tangible. Gannon and Latanowich never met on that October day, but it was a brush that would foretell another encounter 18 months later, that one deadly. Only three years apart in age, they could not have been more different: One man dreaming of a family and a life of service, the other bent on a life outside the law, of money and power and staying out of prison — no matter the cost.They could not have known that they would come face to face in a cramped attic in a rundown house in the Barnstable village of Marstons Mills, bullets closing the distance between them. Police officers searched on the roof of the house where the shooting of Sean Gannon allegedly took place.WBZ-TV***When Sean Gan... (The Boston Globe)
