Late MCC Officer Blinded by Al Qaeda will Finally Get Honor Guard Ceremony

When Louis Pepe, a former federal corrections officer, was buried in Queens, New York on Thanksgiving weekend 2024, there was no honor guard at his gravesite. The only flowers were a basket of red roses provided by his devoted home health aide, Leslie Achiaa.

It wasn't the way it should have been.

Officer Pepe’s longtime health aide left roses at his gravesite last November.

The headline that put Louis Pepe into the news nearly a quarter century ago has been forgotten by most, after a brutal inmate attack on Louie at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on November 1, 2000. Louie lived for 24 years partially paralyzed, fighting to regain speech, and missing his left eye.

So when Louie's retired colleagues from the now-closed MCC read my blog about Louis Pepe's lonely funeral, after Louie's long struggle to find a degree of normalcy in life, some of them shed tears.

"Pepe, I just finished crying," wrote Raoul Watson, a trustee with the Fraternal Order of Police. "Not for you brother, but for how you were treated. I am so ashamed that the agency we worked for treated you so bad. I still can't believe how we had to fight just to get you retirement benefits."

Watson and some other retired officers resolved to fix the way Louis Pepe was laid to rest last November, mourning the fact there was no acknowledgement of the price Louie paid for an act of bravery on that November day.

Louis Pepe was the first real victim of Al Qaeda terrorists on American soil.

He was escorting prisoner Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a one-time advisor to Osama bin Laden, back to Salim's cell after a lawyer's visit. Salim's cellmate jumped Pepe and sprayed hot sauce from the jail's commissary in Pepe's face. That's when Salim used a comb fashioned into a shiv to stab Officer Pepe in the left eye, the weapon penetrating his brain. Help didn't arrive for an hour.

Retired MCC Officer Louis Pepe lived for 24 years with life-altering injuries after 2 inmates attacked him in November 2000.

"What happened to him never should have happened," a fellow officer who worked with Louis Pepe in the early 90's wrote to me just last week, in an e-mail sent to my website.

"The post he worked, which was 10 South, was supposed to have been a 4-man post: 1 lieutenant and 3 officers. Pepe was left on that unit solo. So a major mistake by the leadership."

The retired officer noted, "After that tragedy, they adhered to the 4 man crew. That--however--was too late. A mistake which still haunts the empty walls of 10 South. It was a mistake which cost Pepe everything, it was a mistake which a few people will never forget and unfortunately it's something that many have put in the rear view mirror and carry on as if nothing happened."

The retired officer pointed out that the two inmates--later convicted in the 1998 African embassy bombings that killed more than 220 people--were initially kept in separate cells.

Back in November, when Raoul Watson posted on my site after reading the story of Louis Pepe's death, he was upset about Louie's unattended funeral. Officer Pepe had bravely fought off his attackers' attempts to steal the 10 South keys at the MCC, so they could escape from the facility.

Watson wrote, "I am so sorry, Louis. We all failed you one way or another."

Another officer posted, "Pepe, I still remember when I responded to that body alarm and saw your upper body covered in blood and you still standing tall."

And former Lieutenant Bill Pleasant wrote of Louie, "A really gentle soul....always had a kind word and a smile."

Raoul Watson is now one of the leading figures putting together a proper memorial ceremony for Officer Louis Pepe in late April. Working with the New York City Department of Corrections, Watson has secured an honor guard contingent to appear at Pepe's gravesite at Mount Saint Mary Cemetery in Flushing, Queens. The wheels were set in motion when I was able to find a bagpiper, Matt Romano, who will play during the ceremony. Romano also facilitated the outreach to the Department of Corrections about getting an honor guard.

It is fitting that Officer Louis Pepe will get his due.

And his loving aide, Leslie, will also be recognized for her years of service, which included 12 hour days at Louie's home in Brighton Beach.

Officer Pepe’s longtime health aide, Leslie Achiaa, will be honored at the memorial ceremony.

As Leslie said last November, after burying Louie, "Everything I did for him, he deserved it."