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24 APRIL 2007 · 1631 LINCOLN WAY EAST
Almost exactly a year after Corporal Severns was buried, the department lost its second officer. In the early hours of 24 April 2007, Corporal Nick Samuel Polizzotto, a nine-year veteran, answered a report of shots fired near a nightclub in the 1700 block of Lincoln Way East, with Patrolman Michael Norby. Witnesses directed the officers to a second-floor room at the Wooden Indian Motel, at 1631 Lincoln Way East. As the officers stood at the door, talking with the man inside, he opened fire with a .22-caliber handgun. Polizzotto was carried down from the balcony by fellow officers and died at Memorial Hospital about an hour later; Norby was struck in the right shoulder, the collarbone broken, and survived. The gunman, Scott Barnaby, forty-five, was killed at the scene by the officers' return fire.
The case's disposition is that there was none to reach: the man who killed Corporal Polizzotto died at the scene, and no court ever sat on the case. What the record holds instead is the city's answer. Polizzotto's funeral was held at the Joyce Center on the University of Notre Dame campus, and he was buried at Southlawn Cemetery about ten feet from Corporal Severns. His family was honored in a statement entered in the Congressional Record by Representative Joe Donnelly in May 2007. And the Tribune reported a closing detail that the record keeps: Barnaby's family sent the police department a handwritten letter of apology. The entry stands here under the rule the Fort Wayne record used — the famous cases that reached a courtroom, or that the city itself stopped to count.
Sources:
- Indiana Law Enforcement Memorial and Officer Down Memorial Page, records for Corporal Nick Samuel Polizzotto
- South Bend Tribune coverage of the shooting, the funeral and the apology letter, April–May 2007
- Congressional Record, statement by Rep. Joe Donnelly, 1–2 May 2007