Those who knew slain Delaware State Trooper Matthew T. “Ty” Snook remembered him as a quiet leader who dedicated his life to serving others.
Cpl. Snook, a 2009 graduate of Saint Mark’s High School, was shot and killed as he worked an overtime assignment at the Division of Motor Vehicles branch in Wilmington on Dec. 23. He was remembered Jan. 5 at a service at the Bob Carpenter Center at the University of Delaware that brought an outpouring of supporters from law enforcement and the community.
Hundreds of law enforcement vehicles from every corner of Delaware and neighboring states, and from at least as far as Rhode Island, Iowa and Michigan, processed to the Carpenter Center before dawn, with lights flashing. They traveled beneath a large American flag that flew above South College Avenue before filling the parking lots surrounding the university’s athletic complex.
Cpl. Snook’s body arrived behind an honor guard of police motorcycles from agencies from around the mid-Atlantic region, including New York City, Philadelphia and Richmond, Va. After the hearse stopped, six troopers escorted the casket into the building, with Cpl. Snook’s widow, Lauren, parents Matthew and Karen and other family members and friends following.
A three-hour public visitation brought thousands to Newark, including the Saint Mark’s wrestling team and school administrators. Cpl. Snook was a state champion wrestler for the Spartans and attended the University of Maryland on a wrestling scholarship.
At the service, which was livestreamed, Bishop William E. Koenig of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington read the Prayer for Peace attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. Father William Cocco, a former police officer and current state police chaplain, fought back tears as he read from Scripture.
“When sorrow feels overwhelming, remind us that your love is stronger than death, and your mercy deeper than our pain,” Father Cocco said.
Dan Swasey, Saint Mark’s athletic director who was the officer’s physical education teacher, recalled Cpl. Snook as an excellent student who was on the quiet side.
“He was respectful of all his teachers and all his classmates, but when he hit that mat, he was tough,” Swasey said. “He was a really, really tough wrestler.”
Cpl. Snook also played football for the Spartans for a season before turning his attention exclusively to wrestling. John Wilson was his football coach and a faculty member at Saint Mark’s.
“Just a quiet kid. Kept to himself,” said Wilson, now the athletic director and football coach at St. Georges Technical High School. “He always treated you with respect, treated his teammates with respect.”
Wilson said Cpl. Snook’s wrestling coach at Saint Mark’s, Jason Bastianelli, and some former teammates said it best at one of the vigils held following his death. They noted how he carried himself and stood out among his teammates.
One of those teammates, Rob DeMasi, had known Cpl. Snook since they were toddlers. They were born a month apart in 1991.
DeMasi attended St. John the Beloved School in Wilmington, and Cpl. Snook graduated from Our Lady of Fatima School in New Castle, but they wrestled together for the Tyrant Wrestling club in Wilmington and played against each other in the New Castle County Football League. They also coached wrestling together at H.B. duPont Middle School for a year, going undefeated. Going to high school together was something they’d planned, DeMasi said.
Cpl. Snook “came out of his shell” as a junior and senior at Saint Mark’s, said DeMasi, a former administrator at his alma mater before becoming president of Holy Cross High School in Delran, N.J. At the various vigils held in the weeks since Cpl. Snook’s death, the community has gotten to know the person DeMasi had known his entire life.
“He was a guy that naturally lived to support people,” he said. “He was someone who was very authentic, very genuine. We were going through these vigils in honor of Ty’s life, and one thing that’s coming up, a commonality, is he always brought positive psychology to everyone. So, even if it was a bad situation or a good situation, no matter what it was, he always would see the best in somebody and for somebody.”
Cpl. Snook supported DeMasi in a concrete way while at Maryland. DeMasi started the Muscle Movement Foundation after being diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis, an autoimmune disease, while in high school. Cpl. Snook and his Maryland teammates welcomed a young man with Duchenne muscular dystrophy to one of their matches. They wore shirts reading “Pin Muscle Disease” for the match and made DeMasi the honorary captain.
Cpl. Snook and his wife, a 2012 graduate of St. Elizabeth High School, have a 1-year-old daughter, Letty. DeMasi said he didn’t know how the couple met, but he could see the difference once they got together.
“When he met Lauren, he just had the biggest smile. He just seemed the happiest in his life right now,” DeMasi said.
The old friends talked on the phone a few weeks before Cpl. Snook died, DeMasi said, a call that lasted about 40 minutes.
“For whatever reason that day, we started talking about relationships and family and how many children he wanted, work, his employment,” DeMasi said. “He was a provider. He was happy with his life, happy with his wife, adored his baby girl, Letty, and had aspirations of having more children as well.”
Cpl. Snook was a pre-med major at Maryland, and DeMasi said he had intentions of becoming a dentist. In 2015, however, he entered the Delaware State Police. In his decade in law enforcement, he served as a field training officer; on the day he was killed, he was working an overtime shift before a scheduled week of vacation with his family.
His decision to enter public service was not a surprise to those who knew him.
“You could see that he was going to be in some role where he was going to help people and help his community,” Swasey said.
“He was just that type of person,” Wilson added.
DeMasi said Cpl. Snook had a “heart of gold” and could always make the best of a bad situation. He believes that the officer, as a longtime athlete, loved being part of the brotherhood and sisterhood of the state police and of “something bigger than himself.”
DeMasi has spent time with Cpl. Snook’s family in the weeks since his murder. He said the family — which also includes brother Josh and his wife Kirsten, sister Kassi Dunphy and her husband Ryan, nephew Noah and grandmother Marie “Boch” Janiszewski — has been buoyed by the support the public has shown them.
Swasey was not surprised by the reaction across the state.
“It speaks to the integrity of his personality and how well-liked he was and how respected he was in his profession,” he said. “That just speaks to the community that Delaware is. They rally behind everyone and rally behind the Delaware state troopers.”
Various speakers addressed the crowd inside the Carpenter Center. After the memorial, a 21-gun salute filled the building, and an aviation flyover were held as the body was returned to the hearse. A riderless horse escorted the procession to a cemetery for a private burial.
