Prosecutors: Retired steelworker from Pittsburgh, 80, shoved over mask request at N.Y. bar, dies

WEST SENECA, N.Y. — An 80-year-old man, a retired steelworker from Pittsburgh, who authorities say confronted another patron at a bar for not wearing a mask and was shoved to the ground has died.

Rocco E. Sapienza, who was also a retired Marine, confronted another patron at a bar in West Seneca, N.Y., on Sept. 26 because he was not wearing a mask, Erie County prosecutors said on Monday. Donald M. Lewinski, 65, then shoved Sapienza, who fell and struck his head on the floor, District Attorney John Flynn said.

Sapienza was knocked unconscious and eventually died on Oct. 1, WIVB-TV reported. The cause of death was blunt force trauma, the district attorney said.

Lewinski entered a plea of not guilty to criminally negligent homicide at a court on Tuesday and was released on his own recognizance, his attorney said.

A man in New York was charged with criminally negligent homicide after the police said he pushed Rocco Sapienza, an 80-year-old man who confronted him about not wearing a mask in a bar. Sapienza died five days later.https://t.co/ETxvdhsLoX

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 6, 2020

Lewinski’s attorney, Barry Covert, called Sapienza’s death a tragedy in an email to the Associated Press, and added, “We received witness statements that make it very clear that the victim was the aggressor.

“I have watched the bar videotape, and it does appear that Mr. Sapienza does come from a different part of the bar to initiate the confrontation with my client, who was at a different section of the bar,” Covert said.

West Seneca is a suburb of Buffalo in western New York.

Sapienza’s family in Pittsburgh is remembering him as a Marine who stood up for the little guy.

“He wasn’t afraid to call somebody out for being stupid, for acting stupid. If you knew my father, that’s the kind of guy he was. And my father could hold a conversation with anybody, he was a very friendly man,” Richard Sapienza said.