Standing in the den of her Far Northeast home last night, the widow of the court officer gunned down while serving an arrest warrant early yesterday cradled his numerous law enforcement commendations in her hands and seemed to gather strength from them.
"He was a real hero. He was my hero," Gretchen LeClaire said of her husband, Joseph E. LeClaire Jr., a pretrial warrant supervisor who, with his two partners, was shot in an East Germantown apartment shortly before 1:45 a.m.
"He stood by his men. He never let his men out of his sight," she said, fighting back tears.
Police said LeClaire, who led the raid, and his partners were met with gunfire as they entered a residence on the 4900 block of Stenton Avenue. LeClaire was wounded in the head and stomach. LeClaire - the unit's first officer to be killed in the line of duty - died at Albert Einstein Medical Center about two hours later.
Police said the shooter was the wanted man, identified as Darien Houser, 40.
Houser faced multiple charges last night, including murder.
The wounded officers were senior warrant investigator Vincent A. Di Sandro, 37, a six-year veteran, and Carlo Delborrello, 29, who has two years in the unit. Di Sandro was expected to undergo surgery at Temple University Hospital for a bullet wound to the left hand. He was listed in stable condition.
Delborrello was treated at the same hospital for a bullet wound to the stomach - just below his protective vest - and sent home.
Gretchen LeClaire said she was told that her husband, who had spent nine years with the unit, saved his partners because he was first through the door.
Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson, who briefed reporters after the shootings, said a woman admitted the three officers to the third-floor apartment in the Fisher's Crossing complex shortly after they knocked.
"As soon as the door was open, shots started ringing out," Johnson said.
LeClaire, a police officer in Newport News, Va., in the 1970s who later spent 22 years in the Marine Corps, collapsed inside the apartment.
Houser, who was hit in the back and leg, jumped out a rear window but was captured by Philadelphia police a short time later in a vacant first-floor apartment, authorities said. He was taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania under police guard.
As word of the gun battle spread, warrant-unit officers and city police went to Einstein and Temple to check on conditions and to console one another.
