Exclusive | Were never going to get parole from the horror, widow says of murderer who could be 44th cop-killer freed by NY state

The widow of a NYC police officer who was murdered in Brooklyn nearly 50 years ago is fighting to prevent her husband’s murderer from being the 44th cop killer sprung since 2017.Police Officer Cecil Sledge was killed when parolee Salvatore “Crazy Sal” Desarno ran him over with his Chevy Nova and dragged him five blocks during a stop in Brooklyn in 1980.“Time doesn’t change anything,” said widow Linda Sledge, 75.whose labor of love this Valentine’s Day was to make her 12th trip to the parole board and implore the member she spoke to not to release Desarno, declaring that losing him was “every police officer’s wife’s worst nightmare.”“A kiss goodbye, ‘See you later’ and he walked out the door and I never saw him again,” the widow recalled to The Post this week.

“We’re never going to get parole from the horror of what this man did to us.”  Sledge was riding solo in a radio car on Flatlands Avenue in Canarsie patrolling for synagogue and church vandalism when he spotted Desarno, who was known as trouble to precinct cops and wanted in a donut-shop hold-up.When the 35-year-old cop confronted the suspect, Desarno drew a .38 Smith & Wesson and fired five shots.Sledge drew his own weapon and fired two shots.The cop’s vest stopped the bullets but he slumped to the ground and was run over when Desarno, hit by both bullets, peeled out and dragged the officer to his death.Desarno’s Nova slammed into a Don’t Walk pole at East 58th Street.

He hopped out and crashed through the window of a nearby home, where he took a 50-year-old woman hostage for eight minutes until a small army of police officers arrived.The woman, a travel agent, was unharmed.Desarno had a long rap sheet that started when he was a juvenile, including robbery and assault, and he was on parole for robbery. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in Sledge’s murder and is at Five Points Correctional Facility in Seneca County.Sledge, a U.S.

Army veteran with 12 ye...