Marc DiNardo
Police detective
Born: July 22, 1971, in Jersey City, New Jersey
Died: July 21, 2009, in Jersey City, New Jersey
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2010: Unsung Hero
Detective Marc DiNardo was just days short of his 38th birthday when he and fellow members of the Jersey City Police Department stormed an apartment where two violent suspects were hiding out. The suspects opened fire, repelling DiNardo with a mortal wound.
DiNardo, a 10-year veteran of the force, was one of five officers wounded in the gun battle, which claimed the lives of the two suspects. Rushed to a nearby hospital, DiNardo was kept on life support for five days before succumbing to his wounds.
DiNardo’s death in the line of duty shocked the entire metropolitan area. The son of a retired Jersey City police lieutenant, DiNardo was a husband and father of three young children. He attended Hudson Catholic High School and graduated from St. Peter’s College in Jersey City in 1996 with a degree in criminal justice. DiNardo joined the police department three years later, following completion of his education at the state police academy.
In 2007, DiNardo was assigned at his request to the department’s Emergency Services Unit, which responds to some of the city’s most dangerous crime scenes and life-threatening situations. On July 16, 2009, he was among the officers from four different public-safety agencies who arrived on the scene of a failed stakeout during which a pair of Jersey City police officers had been fired upon.
The suspects in the shooting—who were wanted for an earlier robbery–had fled to a third-floor apartment on Reed Street. Officers used a battering ram to gain entry to the apartment; they immediately were met with gunfire. DiNardo was the most seriously wounded among the officers who fell. It was later determined that one of the suspects who shot the officers was a career criminal who recently had been released from prison after serving five years on a weapons charge. DiNardo had been the arresting officer.
DiNardo kept giving back to the community even after his death. His family donated the slain officer’s organs for transplant and research. Two years later, Jersey City acknowledged its incalculable debt to DiNardo, renaming the elementary school he had attended in his honor.
Burly and good-humored, DiNardo was held in high esteem throughout the community. At the New Jersey Hall of Fame Induction ceremony, when he was honored as an Unsung Hero, he was described as “a cop’s cop” and “an exemplary police officer.”