Town park rising at former Blue Point laundry site to honor Billy Schettino, killed in 2012 crash 

Billy Schettino was 8 when he drew up plans for a skateboard park in his Blue Point neighborhood and slipped them into a folder marked, "TOP SECRET."

His dream seemed to die when Schettino, 18, was struck and killed 11 years ago by a sheriff's deputy's cruiser on the Long Island Expressway.

But next month, a new Brookhaven Town park will open at the vacant Park Street lot that Schettino imagined as a place where he and his neighbors could skate, jog and play basketball. Town officials announced Friday it will be called Billy's Park.

"All he wanted was a community park where the elders could come, where the children could come, where the skaters could come," said JoAnn Schettino, Billy's mother, before a ceremony Friday morning at the park site. "Everyone is [doing] this with love. That's all he ever would have wanted."

The $2 million, 2-acre park is under construction at the site of a former commercial laundry business that was torn down in 1998, when Suffolk County seized it for nonpayment of back taxes. The county transferred the property to Brookhaven earlier this year. 

Funding for the park included $1.6 million from Suffolk County and $400,000 from Brookhaven.

The park is expected to open in about six weeks and will include a playground, walking and biking trails, a basketball court — and skateboard ramps.

His family, of Blue Point, said Billy Schettino would have been thrilled.

"Billy has definitely got to be looking down on this with the biggest smile," said his father, Luigi Schettino.

After he died, Schettino's parents brought their son's skate park idea to local officials and sat through countless meetings as they advocated for the project's completion. Officials at Friday's ceremony credited the family with helping to get the park finished.

"To turn something so tragic into something so beautiful takes an amazing amount of work," said Jason Borowski, president of the Blue Point Civic Coalition.

Schettino, then a Suffolk County Community College student, was standing by his disabled car on March 14, 2012, when he was killed by the cruiser. Authorities said the deputy, who was on routine patrol, was blinded by sun glare.

A civil lawsuit filed by the Schettino family against the county and the sheriff's office was later settled out of court, Luigi Schettino said Friday. He declined to specify terms of the settlement.

His parents remembered their son as a generous soul whose acts of kindness became legendary at Bayport-Blue Point High School before he graduated in 2011.

"He really lit up a room," said his sister Marissa, 22. "He was the best big brother. ... He always included [Marissa and her friends] in things."

Blue Point residents gathered at the ceremony said that, before he died, Billy and his friends had collected trash at the abandoned laundry site, which had become an eyesore strewn with the remnants of a parking lot.

"It's a ... pile of cement and weeds," said Joelle Hawkes, 56, who said she never met the younger Schettino, adding she and her son, Conner, 12, can't wait to use the park.

"My son already asked me to buy him skateboarding equipment."

By Carl MacGowan

carl.macgowan@newsday.comCarlMacGowan

Carl MacGowan is a Long Island native who covers Brookhaven Town after having previously covered Smithtown, Suffolk County courts and numerous spot news and feature stories over his 20-plus year career at Newsday.