HOW A COP AND REFORMED INMATE ARE SPREADING HOPE TOGETHER Writer / Christy Heitger-Ewing Photographer / Amy Payne
Don’t let your past define you. Those are words that Rameil Pitamber, 25, lives by. It’s a mantra he has practiced since he was 17 and made a terrible, life-changing decision that could have cost him his entire future. He was a junior in high school in 2013 when he robbed a Little Caesars restaurant at gunpoint and was taken to county jail. “I was depressed, angry and numb,” Pitamber says. “I wanted to fit in and be
tough so I hung out with the wrong crowd.” As Pitamber sat in jail awaiting his fate, he hoped for the best - house arrest. However, that’s not what happened. “When I called my mom, she broke down crying and said, ‘You’re not coming home,’” recalls Pitamber, who was convicted of felony armed robbery and criminal confinement, and ultimately sentenced to 11 years in prison. Hearing his mom’s sobs as she heard his sentence was a sobering moment he’ll never AUGUST 2020
forget. That’s when he vowed never to put her in that position again. “I made the decision in that cell that I would never come back to prison again,” he says. “I would make better choices.” Brian Nugent, deputy chief of investigations with the Avon Police Department, was Pitamber’s arresting officer. Nugent, now in his seventeenth year with the department, was intrigued by law enforcement when he was a little boy growing up in Tell City, Indiana.
