Accused cop killer Otis McKane claims he gunned down Detective Benjamin Marconi because of a custody dispute. Now, Marconi’s kids are responding.
“He's guilty,” said Marconi’s son, Dane. “Whatever motive was behind the shooting, it doesn't matter.”
Marconi's children didn't watch the jailhouse interviews given by the man accused of killing their father. Dane Marconi and Jacy Lewis said that they didn't feel it was going to be productive, so they asked friends to watch and relied on what they saw.
“It doesn't change what he did,” Lewis said. “It doesn't change that he's never going to come home. Never. That he's never going to get to see our lives and be part of it.”
In an interview on Monday, Otis McKane said he was angry at police for what he saw as their inability to help him in a custody dispute over his son.
“It's easy for a coward…” said Lewis, as her brother finished her sentence “…To not take responsibility.”
“Someone who made, genuinely made a mistake would own up to that mistake,” Lewis continued.
On November 20, Det. Marconi was in front of San Antonio police headquarters where he pulled someone over on a traffic stop. Marconi was sitting in his patrol car writing that person a ticket. Surveillance video shows a man that police say is McKane circling the building, driving past Marconi. On his third time around, a man walks up to Marconi’s patrol car and shoots him twice in the head.
“[It] doesn't fix anything, especially on his part because what did that fix for him?” Dane Marconi asked. “Is it going to benefit him in the future? He's going to forever be away from his children now. If he wanted to see them ever, he's going to see them behind a glass panel.”
Lewis called Marconi “Ben” throughout the interview. She explained that Marconi was her stepfather.
“The irony of what happened is that if [McKane] had just used his words with Ben, Ben would have done everything in his power to at least hear this man out and help him,” Lewis noted.
Marconi’s kids say that they're trying to handle his death as their dad would have wanted them to. They told KENS 5 that he loved his job and recounted a story he told from early in his 20-year career with SAPD, so people who didn’t know him understand what kind of an officer he was:
“[He] pulled the guy over, took his information,” Lewis recalled. “[The man] didn't have any tickets, didn't have any problems. [Marconi] lectured him, used big hand gestures, wagged his fingers and he let him off.”
Lewis said that Marconi’s partner asked Marconi why he didn’t write the man a ticket.
“[Marconi] said, ‘Because if I'd written him a ticket, he wouldn't have been able to put food on the table for his kids.’ Quota or no quota, whatever officers have to meet, in that moment, Ben chose humanity over a ticket.”