Funeral set for hospital security guard Sudanese immigrant, former youth soccer coach shot to death on duty

PORTLAND – A Sudanese immigrant who was shot to death outside Mercy Hospital while on the job as a security guard was a former youth soccer coach who hoped to one day become a police officer.

James Angelo Okot, 27, was gunned down early Sunday in the hospital parking lot while returning from a break. Police are searching for two assailants.

Participating in Saturday’s funeral will be members of a youth soccer team Okot used to coach. The team, which includes Somalis, Jamaican and Sudanese players, will march behind a hearse carrying Okot’s body to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.

“The whole team is going to come together for that day,” said the team’s current coach, Alfred Jacob, “to pay our last tribute to him as a team.”

Meanwhile, family members and friends are wondering why a polite, even-tempered young man would have been gunned down. “He was very peaceful. He didn’t have a temper,” said his younger sister, Lilly Angelo Okot. “He would have been a very good police officer.”

Okot was 14 when he immigrated to Portland in 1995 with his parents, two brothers and four sisters. The family had lived in Egypt for three years after fleeing civil war in Sudan. All through high school, he worked as a cook at DiMillo’s Floating Restaurant.

He and his girlfriend have a 2-year-old daughter, and they lived a block from his parents. Okot recently began talking about enrolling at the University of Southern Maine this fall or winter to further his goal of becoming a police officer.

His night job as an unarmed security guard at Mercy Hospital let him earn money to help support his girlfriend and their daughter, and left him enough time during the day for college courses.

Acting Police Chief Joseph Loughlin said many officers knew Okot because of his job at the hospital and encouraged him to pursue a law enforcement career.

“It is a tragedy,” he said. “It should disturb every citizen in this city, and we need to find these individuals and take action.”