Police Officer Thomas Pegues and his partner Peter Holmstead were making a routine car-stop while they were on foot patrol along New York Blvd. on the night of Aug. 19, 1974, in the 103 Pct., searching for guns, drugs and other possible violations of law. As we know, there are no “routine” traffic-stops. Danger lurks in all of them.

This one seemed not very serious at first. There were two young men in the car, some marijuana, and a driver with a suspended license. The driver was being led from the vehicle in handcuffs when violence entered the picture. The passenger, John Gordon, then 19, suddenly produced a handgun and began firing at the two officers. Holmstead took a bullet through his cap. Officer Pegues, a 27-year-old with slightly more than a year on the job, was shot in the back of the head and died soon afterward at Mary Immaculate Hospital. He had survived two combat tours as a Marine in Vietnam. He did not survive his encounter with John Gordon.

It was one day before his eighth wedding anniversary — the ring he had been planning to give his wife Mary was still in his pocket. It was nine days before their daughter Sabrina’s fourth birthday.

“Instead of celebrating, we were preparing for a funeral,” Mary Pegues said recently.

The occasion of her remarks was a parole request by the killer, Gordon, who had been captured and sentenced to 25-years-to-life. At a hearing before the parole board May 19 that she had traveled from Florida to attend, Mary Pegues, Sabrina, two of Thomas Pegues’ brothers, one of his sisters, PBA President Pat Lynch, Queens South Trustee George Reynolds and others testified their opposition to Gordon’s parole.

Mary Pegues never remarried. “He took my childhood sweetheart from me,” she said. “He shouldn’t be allowed to walk free ever again.”

Mary Pegues broke down in tears at the hearing. It was, she said, the first time she had wept over her husband’s death since that grim night. “I didn’t cry when I heard. I think I was numb. I just felt I had to be strong for my daughter and the rest of the family. There was no need for this man to shoot my husband. It was a senseless killing. He really didn’t get a chance to enjoy his daughter. She loved her father very much, and I did, too.”

For Sabrina Pegues, all that’s left of her father are a few fond memories and an album of photographs and yellowing newspaper clippings. “All I have is a book that tells how my father was murdered,” she told the parole board. “I take my children to the police memorial wall in Albany to see his name inscribed there. All they know of their grandfather is a tombstone. But my mother has done everything she could to keep his memory alive.”

John Gordon went before the parole Board on June 5 and learned shortly afterward that his request for freedom had been denied. He will become eligible again in June 2007. The Pegues family will return at that time and forever after to speak out in opposition to parole for Gordon. And so will the PBA.