#Longtime Trenton cop takes own life in New Jersey parking lot

A longtime Trenton police sergeant committed suicide in a New Jersey parking lot, department sources and city officials said.

Trenton Police Sgt. Daniel Pagnotta III, a 43-year-old department vet of 21 years, fatally shot himself early Wednesday in Plainsboro, Mayor Reed Gusciora confirmed in a statement.

“Beloved by everyone in the Trenton Police Department, he was devoted to Trenton and police work from the time he joined the force after graduating from the police academy in 1999,” Gusciora said. “He will be dearly missed.”

Sources told The Trentonian Pagnotta shot himself while in a parking lot. His body was discovered inside his Dodge Durango at about 3:45 a.m. Wednesday, alongside his discharged service revolver and at least three notes to relatives, Plainsboro Police Lt. John Bresnan told the newspaper.

An autopsy will determine Pagnotta’s precise cause and manner of death, but investigators believe the father of two took his own life based on evidence found inside his vehicle, Bresnan said.

Trenton Police Director Sheilah Coley told reporters at a Wednesday news conference that Pagnotta was “loved, admired and respected” by the entire department, where his father, Dan, also worked prior to retiring, city officials said.

“He is going to be greatly missed within this agency as well as the city of Trenton,” Coley said. “His heart was here. We’re all going through a range of emotions.”

Rolando Ramos, a former Trenton police lieutenant, said Pagnotta put him in charge of the department’s violent crime unit in 2017 and provided much-needed “humble leadership.”

“He was a quiet guy,” Ramos told the Trentonian. “He wasn’t one of those rah-rah guys. But he got the job done.”

Ramos said he wondered if the ongoing police protests and anti-law enforcement sentiment across the country in the aftermath of George Floyd’s police-custody death in Minneapolis in late May somehow factored into Pagnotta’s death.

“Every cop that’s working, there’s the constant questions, the constant fear because of the negativity that’s being constantly pounded on the police,” Ramos told the newspaper.

Coley, meanwhile, refused to discuss what might have led to Pagnotta taking his own life, but cited the daily stresses cops face, saying most people don’t understand what it’s like to go to work and “not know if you’re going to come home at night.”