Injured cop Baribault's son to pay Father's Day visit

Christopher Baribault used to spend Friday nights curled up on the sofa, watching TV with his dad. They would go to the store, rent a movie and stay up late giggling. When there was something about a plot the 6-year-old didn't quite understand, his dad would explain.

In the last four weeks, however, Christopher's dad hasn't been there to explain a lot.

Christopher's dad is Kenneth Baribault, 30, the Nassau County cop critically injured when his police cruiser was hit by a suspected drunken driver on the Long Island Expressway as Baribault prepared to arrest another drunken driver he'd pulled over moments earlier.

Almost a month later, Baribault remains in critical condition in a hospital intensive care unit.

For weeks, Christopher has pleaded to see his dad. The family wanted to protect him. Little kids, his mom said at first, couldn't go to the hospital. But Sunday -- Father's Day -- Christopher will get his dearest wish.

Saturday, he couldn't quite believe it. "Is it for sure that we're going to see him tomorrow?" he asked his mother, Kendra Sauvola.

The family has braced the boy. "He's not going to talk to me. I know that," Christopher said. "He has stuff in his mouth, like tubes."

Concerned about the trauma of seeing his father -- eyes closed and tubes snaking around his body -- the family sought the advice of a counselor, who said Sunday's meeting would do no harm.

In a child's language

Early that May Sunday morning, as a flurry of relatives arrived at his Nesconset home, Christopher could sense something was wrong. Later, Sauvola explained the crash in language a child could understand.

Still, Christopher asked, why couldn't his dad have predicted the tragedy and stayed safe?

"I wish we could know what was going to happen before it does," Christopher told his aunt, Danielle Rella, 24, of Fort Salonga, she said.

For the past month, the Baribault family has sat day after day in a tiny room down the hall from the intensive care unit's main waiting area. Nassau officers, many of them from Baribault's Second Precinct, stop by between shifts to comfort his family. Tears fill even the eyes of cops who've never worked with Baribault. Strangers have delivered flowers and sent cards.

"Every day is a struggle," said sister Jennifer Baribault, 33.

A series of CT scans taken after the crash showed severe swelling in Baribault's brain. In the hours following, surgeons told his family there was a 10 percent chance of survival.

Baribault had surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain, and metal plates were inserted into his fractured pelvis. Mostly he is kept heavily sedated. When he is less medicated, Baribault squeezes relatives' hands and blinks his eyes. One night he gave a group of visiting Nassau cops a thumbs up.

The family said Baribault will likely be moved to a rehabilitation facility in a few weeks, and neurosurgeons expect him to fully recover.

Calling to be a cop

Since he was a teenager at Smithtown High School, Baribault wanted to be a cop. He joined the force in Prince William County, Va., because they let 18-year-olds sign up.

After Christopher was born and after the 9/11 attacks, Baribault wanted to be closer to his parents. He returned to New York, a member of the first graduating class of city officers after the attacks. He worked the midnight shift on foot patrol in the 75th Precinct, in East New York.

He took a job 18 months later with Suffolk park police, joining the Nassau force in 2005, working nights so he'd be able to see Christopher on and off the school bus.

Daily since the crash, his family reconvenes in the same maroon, vinyl chairs in the waiting room, hoping for news that Baribault has improved.

"I'm just so frustrated," Rella said recently in the hospital's coffee shop. Her thoughts only occasionally drift to the man accused of causing all this. When she was younger and would have too much to drink, Rella said she used to call a friend or take a cab home. Why, she wonders, couldn't Rahiem Griffin -- the driver accused of hitting Baribault -- have done that?

Jennifer Baribault said she doesn't have time to be angry at the drunken drivers. Perhaps, she said, if her brother had died she would have stronger feelings. Her focus is on her brother's recovery. Still, she said penalties for drunken driving should be stiffer.

"Even if he makes a full, 100 percent recovery, he came this close to death, he'll never be the same," she said.

The get-well cards keep piling up. One special card hangs on the wall inside Baribault's room. It's from Christopher and shows two stick figures drawn in bright red marker: a father and his son, together.

By EMERSON CLARRIDGE
Posted Sunday, June 15, 2008

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