Nearly 2,000 Attend Services : Slain Policeman Is Eulogized as ‘Role Model’ for His Colleagues

The Los Angeles policeman killed in a shoot-out Monday night with two drug suspects in Sylmar was eulogized Friday as a professional who took to heart the lyrics of a popular rock song that preached “no retreat, no surrender.”

Nearly 2,000 police officers and family friends listened silently at services for slain officer James H. Pagliotti, 28, at the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple in the Wilshire District as Hollywood Vice Officer Glynn Martin talked about the close friend he had first met as a rookie cop at the Police Academy.

“He produced energy and enlivened everyone,” Martin said. “Jim loved life and life loved Jim back.”

Martin then in a halting voice recalled the lyrics of a Bruce Springsteen song, “No Surrender”: “We made a promise we said we’d always remember . . . no retreat, no surrender.”

Lt. Mike Hillmann of the Metro Division, to which Pagliotti was assigned, said the slain officer was a “role model” for his colleagues.

“In the roll call, he sat in the front row and he literally shined,” Hillmann said. “He was a Metro man.”

Pagliotti was slain after he came to the scene of a suspected drug deal in the Sylmar Square area. Responding to a police radio call for help, Pagliotti stepped out of his car, identified himself as a police officer and then took cover behind the car.

As he exchanged shots with one of the suspects, his car, which had been left in gear, rolled forward, exposing him to his assailant, investigators said. He was mortally wounded in the chest.

Although hit, Pagliotti fired 14 shots, wounding one suspect, age 17. He and the other suspect, Thomas Lee Mixon, 19, were later captured.

Officers from police departments as far as away as Bakersfield and San Diego attended the 45-minute service. Among those in attendance were Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block.

Many of those in the audience wiped away tears after expressing their sympathies to the slain officer’s parents, Joe and Alice Pagliotti, brother Daniel and the woman the police officer was to have married on Oct. 3, 24-year-old Vicky Houghton.

She appeared calm and strong during the service and afterward she said Pagliotti’s death was a “numbing pain.”

“He died doing what he loved best,” she said. “And he worked hard. I know it’ll be hard, but tomorrow will be different . . . and every day after that.”

Asked what she thought of the two suspects arrested in the case, Houghton replied, “I pray for them.”

After the service, Pagliotti was buried in a private ceremony in Goleta, near Santa Barbara.

Meanwhile, one of the suspects, Mixon, of South-Central Los Angeles, has been charged in San Fernando Municipal Court with one count each of murder, assault with a force likely to cause great bodily harm, conspiracy to sell drugs and selling cocaine.

Arraignment for Mixon, whom Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard L. Jenkins said is on parole from the California Youth Authority on a narcotics charge, is scheduled for Tuesday.

The other suspect, a 17-year-old whose name is being withheld because he is a juvenile, has been charged with one count of murder in Eastlake Juvenile Court, Deputy Dist. Atty. Mitchel J. Harris said. Arraignment is set for July 15, because doctors at County-USC Medical Center jail ward say the juvenile needs the time to recover from a gunshot wound to the chest.

The 17-year-old is believed to have fired the shot that killed Pagliotti, Detective Marvin G. Engquist said.