Tunnel to Towers group to pay off slain NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller's home mortgage

The Tunnel to Towers Foundation said Thursday it will pay off the mortgage on the home of slain NYPD Officer Jonathan E. Diller, killed while on duty Monday evening in Queens.

"Every day Officer Diller donned his uniform, there was a risk he may not come home," Tunnel to Towers Chairman and CEO Frank Siller said in a statement Thursday. "We will honor him not only for his sacrifice but for his unwavering resolve to protect the people of New York City. Tunnel to Towers is honored to ensure his family can stay in their home, forever."

Tunnel to Towers has provided over a thousand homes nationwide to America's Heroes, fallen first responder families, Gold Star Families, and catastrophically injured veterans and first responders, according to a spokesman.

On Long Island, the foundation has paid off the mortgages for nearly 40 families, the spokesman said.

Diller, 31, who grew up in Franklin Square and lived in Massapequa Park with his wife, Stephanie, and their son, Ryan, was killed when he and his partner approached a Kia sedan parked in a bus lane on Mott Avenue in Far Rockaway just before 6 p.m. Monday, the NYPD said.

The driver, Lindy Jones, 41, has been charged with criminal possession of a weapon and the passenger, Guy Rivera, 34, who is accused of shooting Diller, has been charged with first-degree murder.

The nonprofit Tunnels to Tower Foundation was started in honor of FDNY firefighter Stephen Siller, who, assigned to Brooklyn Squad 1 and though off-duty, raced into Manhattan, running through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel strapped with 60 pounds of equipment, to get to Ground Zero following news of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in Sept. 11, 2001.

He was killed in the collapse of the towers.

The foundation pays off the mortgages for families of law enforcement officers and firefighters killed in the line of duty — or, who die as the result of 9/11-related illness — and leave behind young children.

It also helps build specially adapted "smart homes" for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders, while also committed to eradicating veteran homelessness.

With John Asbury

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”