YORK COUNTY, Pa. (WHP) – One police officer was killed and five people were hurt in a mass shooting at a Pennsylvania hospital.
The mother of that slain officer shared her emotional story about her son after his death.
“It just looked like he was sleeping and I kissed the top of his head, just like I did the day he was born. It’s unreal,” Nancy Duarte Materese remembered.
On Saturday, Materese said goodbye to her only child, Officer Andrew Duarte.
“Every time I would leave him, I would say, ‘Be smart and be safe.’ And I told him that I loved him, always,” Materese said.
The St. Michael medal he wore every day is now around her neck.
“They gave it to me at the hospital,” Materese said.
The two of them were best friends.
“We saw each other once or more times a week. We’d have dinner. We’d have breakfast. We’d go for a walk. We Snapchatted each other all day long.”
Materese says Duarte was her miracle baby, only 3.5 pounds when he was born. He was never up on the growth chart, but what he didn’t have in stature, he had in courage.
Duarte finished fourth in his class in Denver, where he was a DUI enforcement officer.
“I’m proud that he was a man that would run into danger,” Duarte’s mother said.
He moved to York County in 2022 to be close to his mother.
“It’s shocking, overwhelming, incredibly sad,” Materese described. “I don’t know how to go on. I don’t know how to walk out the rest of my life without him. He was everything to me.”
Meterese says she wants people to know how wonderful her son was.
“He was well loved and he loved well,” Materese said.
Funeral arrangements have been made for Duarte and are scheduled to take place Friday afternoon.
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