Fiance pays respects at drugstore scene

Pat Taccetta said she needed to see where her daughter Jaime was killed, so she and her husband drove to Haven Drugs in Medford Tuesday morning, parking in front of a makeshift memorial to the four people shot to death there.

She made the sign of the cross. Her husband, Ralph Taccetta, placed an arm around her. She began to wail.

"Oh, Jaime," she cried, touching a metal grate covering a window as her son Daniel Taccetta, who joined them, held her up.

"It was so senseless," Pat Taccetta said. "There was no reason to shoot them. . . . We're going to get him, and justice is gonna be done."

Jaime Taccetta, 33, of Farmingville, was one of four people Suffolk County police said were shot by a gunman Sunday morning. Police have launched a search for the bearded suspect, targeting drug addicts as suspects in the slayings and asking doctors and pharmacists Tuesday if they recognized the suspect from store surveillance footage.

Jaime's grieving daughters from a previous marriage -- Katilyn, 6, and Miranda, 16 -- visited later Tuesday. They were accompanied by a somber man who said he was both their father and Taccetta's ex-husband. He did not give his name. Taccetta's daughters dropped off flowers and quickly left.

A short time later, Taccetta's fiance, James Manzella, arrived. He also set down flowers, a stuffed monkey and a poignant note that read, in part: "To Jaime. The best thing to ever happen to me."

On the day Jaime Taccetta was killed, the couple had a full, festive day planned. They wanted to test drive an SUV and host a cookout at their Farmingville home. Manzella had come to the pharmacy with her to pick up a thyroid prescription the morning of the shooting. While Manzella waited outside in the car, she went inside the store. Moments later, she was killed by a gunman who then packed a backpack with prescription painkillers and left, police said. Manzella went in after her, discovered the carnage and dialed 911. Manzella did not speak to reporters Tuesday.

Outside the pharmacy Tuesday afternoon, Jaime Taccetta's parents, brother and other relatives gathered in a circle.

Pat Taccetta had cut short a vacation in Jamaica and flew home Monday night after she was told that her son had suffered a seizure. But moments after her flight landed at Kennedy Airport, police escorted her to a room, where she was told the real reason she was summoned home: Her daughter was dead.

"My baby," Pat Taccetta said, sobbing. "I just wish she was here with us right now," she said at another point.

Ralph Taccetta said later that his daughter's wedding dress was still hanging at home and she will be buried in it.

"I'm going to miss her," Pat Taccetta said.

She said her daughter was "so happy that she was going to get married."

She said Manzella was devastated. "He's not too good," she said.

Tuesday, she held a picture of her daughter, taken from when she participated in a beauty pageant at age 7. She talked about how her grandchildren, Jaime's two daughters, were going to miss their mother terribly and added: "There's three other families that are suffering, too."

As she, her husband and son stood at the site, mourners, most of them strangers, came to pay their respects to the victims.

Some left cards, some left candles. Some said prayers.

One young girl, no more than a teen, walked up and placed a single rose at the site.

"I can't believe my daughter's gone," Pat Taccetta said amid tears. "She was a wonderful person, so wonderful."