Officer Daniel Talbot was just 30 years old when he was fatally shot in 2007. (Facebook)
The family of a Massachusetts police officer who was fatally shot in 2007 found out Thursday that the convicted killer has taken a plea deal that will spring him from prison in 2021.
Revere, Mass., Officer Daniel Talbot was just 30 years old when he was shot in the face by Robert Iacoviello Jr. behind Revere High School – as the officer’s fiancée and three fellow police officers watched in horror, the Boston Herald reported.
Iacoviello mistakenly believed that the off-duty Talbot was a member of a rival gang who had taunted one of his friends, Boston’s WBZ-TV reported.
“The fact that you might get out in two [sic] years is insane to me,” Talbot’s brother, Robert, said to the cop killer in court Thursday, the Herald reported, “and I beg the court not to take this offer.
“The fact that you might get out in two [sic] years is insane to me, and I beg the court not to take this offer. It’s not fair to me and not fair to my family.”
“It’s not fair to me and not fair to my family.”
According to the Boston Globe, Iacoviello, now 30, was a supermarket clerk and reputed gang associate who was convicted of second-degree murder in Talbot’s death in 2010. He received a life sentence, and was to be eligible for parole after 15 years.
But an appeals court tossed the conviction in 2016, ruling that jurors were not instructed about a possible self-defense verdict. There was debate during the trial about which man had pulled his gun first, the Globe reported.
Prosecutors decided to strike a plea deal for manslaughter rather than retry the case, the Globe reported. There was concern that the passage of time would make the gathering of witnesses more difficult, WBZ reported.
The deal calls for Iacoviello to serve 14 years, minus the 11 he has already spent behind bars, the Herald reported.
“We hope that everyone involved will go forward with peace and understanding of this resolution,” Iacoviello’s attorney, Jonathan Shapiro, told the court, according to the Herald.
“Everyone but Dan Talbot,” Suffolk Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Locke noted.
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