Dad who killed wife near kids sentenced (Saugerties, New York)

Dad ANTHONY PASSARO has been found guilty of gunning down and killing his wife with a hunting rifle inside their home. Their 7-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son apparently witnessed the shooting. So Dad got a child endangerment charge slapped onto his 2nd-degree murder conviction.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20091124/NEWS05/911240310

Man who killed wife near kids sentenced
Larry Hertz • Poughkeepsie Journal • November 24, 2009

A Saugerties man who fatally shot his wife while the couple’s two children were in the house was sentenced Monday to 25 years to life in state prison.

Acting Ulster County Court Judge Roger McDonough imposed the sentence on 41-year-old Anthony Passaro while Passaro lay on a gurney at the Ulster County Law Enforcement Center in Kingston.

Passaro was found guilty in March of killing his wife with a hunting rifle inside their Saugerties home Sept. 26, 2007.

The nonjury trial lasted five days.

Passaro, who has diabetes and multiple sclerosis, sustained an infection shortly after the trial and has been confined in the infirmary at the county jail complex for the past five months.

District Attorney Holley Carnright, who prosecuted Passaro, said he believed the maximum sentence was appropriate.

“It’s hard to imagine a more serious or horrific crime,” Carnright said.

He said the couple’s 7-year-old daughter, Faith, and 10-year-old son, Anthony, had apparently witnessed the shooting, and Anthony called a 911 dispatcher.

“The children are obviously conflicted,” the district attorney said. “They still love the father they remember (before the shooting) but can’t understand why he would kill their mother, and now they have lost both of them.”

In addition to second-degree murder, Passaro was convicted of one count of criminal possession of a weapon and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child.

McDonough sentenced him to seven years on the weapon charge and a year in jail on each of the endangering counts.

The sentences will run concurrently to the prison term on the murder conviction.

Carnright said Passaro would be transferred to a medical facility in the state prison system in the next few days.