Staff Sgt. Louis M BonacasaReutersThe family of Long Island serviceman Louis Bonacasa tearfully welcomed his body back Thursday after he was killed in a Dec. 21 suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
Bonacasa’s wife, Deborah, and daughter, Lilianna, 5, clutched the Coram, LI, man’s picture as his body arrived at Gabreski Air National Guard base in Westhampton Beach.
“These are tough times, tough days, lots of sacrifices. Some people make the ultimate sacrifice,” Gov. Cuomo said at a wake attended by about 300 people.
Bonacasa, a member of the security unit at the Stewart Air National Guard base in Newburgh, served at the 106th Rescue Wing at Gabreski from 2008 to 2010.
NYPD Detective and Air National Guardsman Joseph Lemm, killed in the same attack, was mourned at St. Patrick’s Cathedral a day earlier.
The coffin with Staff Sergeant Louis Bonacasa’s remains is carried from the hangar at Gabreski Air National Guard base.VICTORALCORN.COM