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Officer Down: Police Officer Marc DiNardo

Age: 3

Cause of Death: Gunfire

Police Officer Marc DiNardo died from gunshot wounds he received five days earlier when he and four other officers were shot while attempting to appended two suspects wanted for robbing and shooting a citizen.

On the morning of Thursday, July 16, 2009, a Jersey City Police Lieutenant and Police Officer were staking out a parked car believed to have been the getaway car used in a violent robbery in which a person was shot. At 5:15 a.m two suspects, one male and one female, wearing bathrobes entered the vehicle, moved it across the street and stepped back out. The Lieutenant and Officer ordered the suspects to stop, but the male suspect turned, pulled a shotgun from under his robe and began firing, grazing one officer in the leg and shattering the windshield of the unMarced police car used in the stakeout.

The suspect then fled to a third-floor apartment on Reed Street and dozens of backup police officers from Jersey City, the Hudson County Sheriff's Office and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began arriving on the scene.

Officers spent the next hour and a half evacuating the building. At about 6:45 a.m., members of the Jersey City Emergency Service Unit, including Officer DiNardo, approached apartment 3B and demanded that the occupants come out. When no one answered, the officers used a battering ram to gain entry. Upon entering, the officers were immediately fired upon by the suspect. Officer DiNardo was shot in the face, and a second officer was shot in the neck. Additionally, another Jersey City Police Officer was wounded along with a Police Officer from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department.

Both suspects were shot an killed in an exchange of gunfire with the officers as the officers entered the apartment.

It was later determined that the male suspect, who shot the officers, was a violent career criminal who had recently been released from prison, after serving five years for weapons possession charges that Officer DiNardo had arrested him on.

Officer DiNardo was taken to the Jersey City Medical Center where he died five days later from his wounds. His organs were all donated for transplant.

Officer DiNardo had served with the Jersey City Police Department for 10 years and was assigned to the Emergency Service Unit. He is survived by his wife and three young children.