10 Years Later, LIRR Victims Persevere

Survivors, Families Recall Shootings

By Joie Tyrrell

Staff Writer

December 6, 2003

The grandchildren held long-stemmed roses and the crowd cheered when Theresa Caravella walked into the room.

She had turned 70, a milestone for some, but for her particularly so. Ten years ago she had needed a new heart.

Standing in the rear of the Bay Shore restaurant in November, beside the white-frosted cake wishing a "Happy 70th," were Jack and Arlene Locicero. A decade earlier their daughter, Amy Federici, had been fatally shot aboard a Long Island Rail Road train.

Since then, the lives of Caravella and the Lociceros have been intertwined. After their daughter's death, the Lociceros agreed to donate her organs. Caravella received her heart.

Each Mother's Day, Caravella sends them a floral arrangement. The card reads "Love, From Amy's heart."

"Look at what has happened from it all," Arlene Locicero said.

Ten years ago Sunday a lone gunman named Colin Ferguson opened fire on a crowded railroad car, killing six and wounding 19. They were just commuters trying to get home on the 5:33 that December night. Instead their lives were changed forever. Some won't talk about it. Others share pains that linger to this day. And, some have decided that after a decade life does, indeed, go on.

Now, the pregnant woman who was wounded has a 9-year-old daughter. The man from Franklin Square is living in a new house with his wife after nearly losing his 20-plus-year marriage.

The nurse from Mineola is a congresswoman with a grandson named for her murdered husband. One widow moved 2,000 miles away, but returned and is an anti-gun activist. A bride who hobbled down the aisle on crutches just had a third child. A former commuter keeps a coat with three bullet holes boxed in her garage.

And, the heart of a 27-year-old victim beats in the body of a woman who just turned 70.

A memorial service at the Merillon Avenue station scheduled for Sunday was cancelled due to the weather. It was expected to be the final formal service, organizers say, because it is time to move forward.

For Jack and Arlene Locicero, the death of their first-born child has meant a lifetime of advocacy for organ transplant. Their daughter, Federici, was the last of the victims to die after being on life support for five days after being shot in the neck. They agreed to donate her kidneys, her liver and her heart.

They formed an organization called Transplant Speakers International Inc. and travel to schools and groups throughout the country to educate the public about organ and tissue donation. They always show an 8-by-10 photograph of their smiling, dark-haired daughter.

"We sometimes feel that people believe that closure with the death of a child can happen but it doesn't," said Jack Locicero, a retired teacher from Hawthorne, N.J.

The Lociceros have kept in close touch with Caravella, attending graduations and weddings, sharing the joys of grandchildren. In February, the Lociceros are expecting another grandchild, when their daughter, Carrie Opderbeck and her husband, Ted, have their second.

"It's clear to us the decision we made in 1993 continues on," Arlene Locicero, a retired schoolteacher, said. "What people don't understand, people like ourselves term it 'sorrowful joy.' . . . We don't have Amy, but Theresa has life and we rejoice in that."

"I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for these great people," said Caravella, of Islip. She swept Arlene Locicero into a hug.

Shooting victims Lisa Combatti and Debra Weber, of Garden City, have found comfort in their friendship. They consider themselves the lucky ones. They survived.

Weber, shot in the thigh, was surrounded by slain commuters. Combatti, who was seven-and-a-half months pregnant, was shot as she crouched in a fetal position to protect her unborn child. She was struck in the buttocks and needed surgery to remove the bullet.

To this day, people say to Combatti: "You were the one." Immediately they ask "How's the baby?"

The baby is now a 9-year-old girl named Kimberly who is in the fourth grade.

She also had a son, Daniel, who is 7.

"He tests me," Combatti said. She has to explain to him why he can't have T-rated games for his Gamecube, because, unlike characters in a video game, when real people are shot they don't always pop back up.

But, Mommy, he said. "You did."

Then she has to tell him about the six people who didn't.

"We've been very fortunate and that's the hard part. We have our lives ahead of us," she said.

The two friends have moved to a point in their lives where, when someone asks how they met, they turn to each other and smile. Sometimes, they can even joke about it.

"We've had so much good in our lives since," Weber said. A few hours before the first memorial service, Weber found out she was pregnant. Her son, Matthew, is now in the third grade.

She does philanthropic work for Winthrop-University Hospital. She has kept the cards and letters that well-wishing strangers sent during her recovery. And in a box in her garage sits a coat with three bullet holes in it.

"It's always going to be a part of your life because so many people lost their lives and you can't forget that," she said.

Combatti, 43, still commutes from Merrillon Avenue for her job as a vice president at Deutsche Bank in Manhattan, avoiding the 5:33 but sitting in that same third car. It's a small act large with defiance. Around this time each year, she sees the memorial wreaths placed at the station for the six who were slain.

"The first day I see them I will walk by and I can't help but think of what happened," she said. "By February and they are still up, I want to tear them down. Enough already, we have to go on here."

Robert Giugliano, of Franklin Square, won't go to the Merillon station at all. Instead, he commutes from Stewart Manor. He never sleeps during the ride.

Over the past decade, he has been recognized as the "five-minutes alone" guy, he said. That's because on the witness stand during his victim-impact statement to the court, Giugliano, a father of three daughters, asked the court for five minutes alone with Ferguson.

"I am a Christian, but I said it then and I'll say it today: Deep inside I still want five minutes alone with [him]," said Giugliano, 48, at his home on a recent fall night. "It angers me -- the judicial system . . . Ferguson, he's in isolation. I want him in the general [prison] population. Why is he protected?"

In the glare of the media after the shootings and after the trial, Giugliano was frequently outspoken, always available for a quote or two. When the spotlight faded, Giugliano struggled with what had happened. He had been shot in the right arm, the bullet traveling the length of his upper arm and lodging in his chest.

"He would say 'You couldn't understand it. You weren't there'," said his wife, Donna.

In 1996, they separated and were apart for their 20th-wedding anniversary. Through therapy and long talks, they reunited a year later. Since then, they have bought a new house, a fixer-upper they worked on themselves. In April, they celebrated 27 years of marriage. But for Giugliano, some issues still remain.

"I still want that bullet," Giugliano said. "I just want it for my own peace of mind, maybe some type of sense of closure for myself."

Joyce Gorycki's marriage ended 10 years ago Sunday when Ferguson fatally shot her husband of 15 years, James. The next day, she said, she "became a different person."

She tried to escape, transplanting herself and her daughter in 1995 across the country to Scottsdale, Ariz., but was lost among the polite but detached neighbors in the Southwest.

She moved back after 10 months and became a fervent anti-gun activist who now serves as the Long Island co-chair of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence. Recognized for her gun control efforts, in 2000 she stood alongside Gov. George Pataki at the Merillon Avenue station as he signed one of the strictest gun laws in the country.

"When I started this, a lot of people said 'Joyce, why are you wasting your time?' " Gorycki, of Mineola, said. "I'm glad I didn't listen to them."

She fills her days with work and volunteerism, sometimes she's out of the house almost every night of the week. She works as the deputy village treasurer for the Village of Mineola. Five years ago, she bought her own home. She dates, but has never found what she once had. "I'm lucky to have had one soul mate, I guess," she said.

She has remained close with U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-Mineola), the two women working hard on gun-control issues. McCarthy lost her husband, Dennis, in the shooting, and her son, Kevin, was seriously wounded. "Many a time I think about where I am today, and where I was on the morning of Dec. 7 and how life changes so rapidly," she said.

Helen Goldstone, of Huntington, who married a month after the shooting, now has three children. A bullet had shattered her thigh bone; another hit her chest and collapsed a lung. She was hospitalized for 10 days. But she walked down the aisle on lace-trimmed crutches.

Unlike some other victims who have saved the articles, and cards from well-wishers, she tossed everything out.

"I made up my mind, this was a horrible thing and I need to put it behind me. I can't keep dwelling on this thing, because if I do, then Colin Ferguson wins and destroys my life," she said. "No one should be able to take away not only your life but the things you want to accomplish in life."

Copyright © 2003 Newsday, Inc.

This article posted January 2, 2004.