An off-duty Rosemont police officer shot and killed his brother-in-law during a “domestic incident,” officials said.
The police officer, Rick Drehobl, is the son of Rosemont’s clerk, Debbie Drehobl, and retired Rosemont police Capt. Richard Drehobl, town spokesman Gary Mack said.
The man shot and killed Wednesday, Joseph Caffarello, got married in 2010 to the town officials’ daughter, Deanna Drehobl, records show.
Caffarello, a clouted Rosemont man who came to local attention when he was photographed sleeping on the job as a tollway supervisor, was shot after an escalating domestic altercation, officials said.
Rick Drehobl, who was off-duty, was in a car with his sister and her baby when Caffarello, driving anothercar, crashed into them, Mack said.
The noon shooting outside on Scott Street occurred after the car accident, Mack said. He could not provide more details.
Rosemont has turned over the investigation to the Illinois State Police.
Caffarello is the second homicide victim in less than a week in the normally quiet northwest suburb of just 4,000 residents.
Rick Drehobl, who has been on the job for four years, has been put on leave pending the outcome of the investigation, Rosemont police said.
State police spokeswoman Monique Bond confirmed ISP was investigating but declined to provide details.
Caffarello was two years ago photographed on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, sleeping on the job while he worked as an Illinois Tollway garage supervisor.
He’d twice previously been fired, only to win his job back, before underlings in 2013 finally secured his dismissal by photographing him asleep in his office.
And he wasn’t shy about bragging that he had clout that protected him, authorities said at the time. He was also accused of intimidating tollway employees and threatening to bring down the tollway’s inspector general.
Caffarello “did threaten to get anyone who was opposing him, including me,” Tollway Inspector General James Wagner said in 2013. “There were reports from the employees that he referred to his clout being able to take care of him.”
Caffarello’s attorney disputed the allegations, but Cafarello did have ties to people with mob or political connections, public records show.
Though Caffarello wasn’t accused himself of being in the Mob, he once wrote that his uncle — the late mob street tax collector Anthony “Jeep” Daddino — had been like a father to him. Daddino has been described by the Chicago Crime Commission as an Outfit member who was friends with the first mayor of Rosemont, Donald Stephens, and was a village employee. Daddino also worked for the late, feared mob killer Frank “The German” Schweihs, court records show.
When Stephens died in 2007, Daddino was at the funeral and told the Sun-Times he “lost a very good friend.”
The following year, after Daddino died from cancer, Caffarello asked the tollway for bereavement leave — something normally reserved for the deaths of immediate relatives.
“I consider my uncle immediate family due to the fact that he raised me from a baby,” Caffarello wrote in a letter to tollway officials. “I do not have a relationship with my father, and my uncle was the closes [sic] thing to a father.”
When he wasn’t working at the tollway, Caffarello found work at D & P Construction, which has been tied to the family of reputed Chicago Outfit boss John DiFronzo.
Caffarello said he was “screwed” by the tollway after he was fired the third time.
Beyond that, he didn’t want to discuss his dismissal with the Sun-Times in 2013, telling a reporter he was about to enjoy a dinner of orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe cooked by his mom, whom he described as “the best.”
After that firing and the Sun-Times articles, Caffarello filed a federal lawsuit against the Tollway, its inspector general and a state representative, claiming, among other things, that he had been discriminated against because of his Italian national origin.
A judge dismissed some of the counts of the lawsuit, records show.
Caffarello ultimately dismissed the remaining claims in exchange for the Tollway reimbursing some of his attorney fees, Tollway spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said.
Caffarello’s relatives could not be reached. Neither could the Drehobl family.
Contributing: Rosalind Rossi
