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Sgt. Sean Gannon's parents call for change: 'We will never be the same'

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. -- Nineteen days after losing their son, the heartache and devastation remain fresh for the parents of Yarmouth Police Sgt. Sean Gannon.

For the first time since their son's murder, they shared their story and talked about how the fear they lived with every day became a reality on April 12.

“We’re living my worst fear,” Denise Morency Gannon, Sean’s mother, told Boston 25 News reporter Drew Karedes. “I do wish I could see him one more time and give him one more hug.”

The hole in their family is one the Gannons never expect to fill. Sean was the oldest of their three children. As a police officer, his job was dangerous, but his parents prayed that something like this would never happen to Sean.

“There’s not a day we both didn’t worry,” his mother said. “It isn’t something you get over recover from. You go through, it isn’t even day-by-day, it’s minute-by-minute.”

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Denise and her husband Patrick say the minutes, hours, days and weeks since Sean’s death have been and will continue to be an uphill climb.

However, they are focused on putting one foot in front of the other. They are leaning on their faith, their family and the voice of their son they can hear in their minds.

“Sean would not be saying, ‘mourn longer.’ He’d be saying, ‘get up and do something,’” Patrick said. “We’ll never be the same we were before, never.”

Sean is no longer physically here, but his parents say they can feel his presence with them as they embark on a new crusade for change.

Denise, Patrick and others touched by the case are pushing to make changes to the judicial system. That system allowed Sgt. Gannon’s killer to avoid prison time through a combination of non-guilty findings by judges and failure of key witnesses to testify.

The Yarmouth Police Department now refers to the man charged with Sean’s murder simply as a number, 125, representing the number of criminal charges he had accrued over the years.

His alleged actions as Sergeant Gannon and fellow officers tried to serve an arrest warrant could finally be what leads to a life in lockup.

“Fix it because it’s backwards, it’s grievous, and someone else will be hurt the way we’ve been hurt,” Sean’s mother said. “It’s something that can never be recovered and it’s wrong and they are wrong.”

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