DATE: Sunday, September 28, 1997            TAG: 9709280087

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LARRY W. BROWN, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  112 lines

PARENTS LOOK FOR JUSTICE AFTER POLICE KILLED SON

Tony and Rosemarie Quagliato were looking forward to Easter vacation. Their son Bruce was planning to drive up from Virginia to his boyhood home in Massachusetts for the holiday.

Easter at the Quagliato home in East Longmeadow, Mass., was a longstanding family tradition.

But there would be no happy reunion for Easter 1997.

The couple was sound asleep when two police officers rapped on their front door in the early morning hours of March 25, five days before Easter. The officers were there to tell them the bad news about about their son. It was 3 a.m.

Bruce V. Quagliato, 28, had died in a barrage of bullets fired by police officers after a low-speed chase in Virginia Beach.

``We fell apart,'' Tony Quagliato said in an interview from his home Friday. ``They couldn't give us any information other than he was shot, and shot by police.''

Details of the incident emerged slowly. In the months that followed, they have tried to piece together what happened that night while shouldering their grief.

``It's been very devastating to the family,'' Tony Quagliato said. ``It's been six months of horror.

Tony and his wife, both 60, have followed the news reports from Virginia. They learned last week, for instance, that as many as 18 Virginia Beach officers have been notified that they will be disciplined for violating Police Department policies and could be suspended, demoted or fired for their roles in the shooting.

But mostly, Tony said, the Quagliatos console one another. They go to church and pray.

``My wife and I pray every day that the good Lord will prevail,'' said Tony Quagliato, whose family is Roman Catholic.

``I've been crying every day,'' Rosemarie Quagliato said. ``There isn't a day that goes by I don't think of my son.''

Bruce Quagliato was shot after a low-speed chase along Independence Boulevard. The pursuit began at the Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base. Police fired 60 shots at Quagliato's car at the end of the chase, after he tried to use his car as a battering ram against a phalanx of police cars that had surrounded his.

The Quagliatos will not talk about the particulars of that early spring night, the actions against the Beach officers or their pending civil action against the police department and the Navy. Hampton Roads attorney Jim McKenry last month put the city and the Navy on notice that a lawsuit likely will be filed in the case.

But the Quagliatos will talk - still with some difficulty, even after six months - about their son.

They said Bruce was a loving son who had never been in trouble before, a son who talked often with his mother by phone after moving to Virginia in 1995 to be near the beach and warm ocean waters.

Their phone calls to one another were filled with love, she said.

``I miss those conversations,'' she said through tears. ``I'm totally heartbroken by the whole thing. Our lives have changed completely.''

Through it all though, the Quagliatos insist that they are not angry or vengeful. But they do want justice.

``There's no anger. We just want the matter cleared,'' Tony Quagliato said.

Tony said his son ``was never into drugs or drinking or any of that stuff. He was just a good kid, and there are several people who can verify that by the letters we received.''

The letters, he said, were written by people Bruce had known from third grade through college, and by a few friends he made while in Virginia Beach.

``Bruce loved his family, and we loved him,'' he said. ``He was liked by everyone.''

News of Bruce's death shocked the small Massachusetts town where he had lived from age 8. In 1977, the Quagliatos moved from the Boston area to East Longmeadow, just outside Springfield.

About 15,000 people live there, and many know the Quagliatos well - especially Bruce Quagliato and his two older brothers, from their glory days in high school sports. Bruce played baseball and wrestled at East Longmeadow High School before he graduated in 1987.

He went on to Holyoke Community College in 1990 after taking classes in business administration and then took technical electronics courses at Springfield Technical College.

Tony Quagliato's voice rose when he recalled how Bruce used some of his newfound skills on one of his prized possessions: a completely restored 1977 Camaro. Bruce bought it in 1991 and refurbished the mechanical parts at his family's house. He had the body work and upholstering done. He entered the car in several New England car shows.

It was the same car he was driving the night he was shot to death. The car was riddled with bullet holes.

``It was mint condition, like coming out of a showroom,'' Tony Quagliato said. ``I hate to think of what it looks like today.''

Bruce had visited a friend in Virginia Beach several times on vacations. Lured by the sun and beaches in the resort city, he decided to move in the summer of 1995.

``He fell in love with the warm water and the ocean,'' Tony Quagliato said.

Bruce was working as a maintenance engineer at a Ramada Plaza Resort Oceanfront when he died, Tony said.

He enjoyed surfing and bike riding in Seashore State Park and would make the 10-hour drive to Massachusetts during the summer and on holidays. The Quagliatos last saw their son last Christmas.

``It was beautiful,'' Tony said. ``Thank God we have videos and pictures.''

Their son tried to come home for all of the holidays, he said.

The Quagliatos do not have a large extended family. Older brothers Michael, 32, and Steve, 31, live in the Boston area and upstate New York, respectively.

Their youngest son was the jokester of the family, Tony said, always trying to make people laugh and never staying cross with anyone.

``He was a fun-loving person who enjoyed life, enjoyed people and loved his family very much,'' Tony Quagliato said. ``He will forever be in our hearts for the rest of our lives.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tony and Rosemarie Quagliato say they aren't angry about the death

of their son, Bruce, who was killed by Virginia Beach police. KEYWORDS: SHOOTING FATALITY VIRGINIA BEACH POLICE

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