NEW YORK (AP) — A funeral is being held on Long Island for an Air Force master sergeant and New York City firefighter who had faced bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hurricanes in Texas and the Caribbean.
Christopher Raguso always came home to Long Island, alive — except this last time.
On Saturday, his flag-draped casket arrived atop a fire engine at a Roman Catholic church in the Suffolk County hamlet of Kings Park.
The 39-year-old lieutenant in the New York Fire Department was also a volunteer firefighter in nearby Commack, where he lived with his wife and two daughters.
He was killed on March 15 in a military helicopter crash in Iraq that took the lives of seven National Guard members including that of another FDNY firefighter, Capt. Christopher “Tripp” Zanetis.