Last modified: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 8:58 AM EDT Aaron Fine (Staff photo by Mark Stockwell) Driver in fatal crash seeking early release BY FRANK MORTIMER SUN CHRONICLE STAFF FOXBORO - In a June 25 sentencing hearing, Mansfield Police Officer Aaron Fine tearfully told the court he would give his life if it would bring back the 10-year-old bicyclist who died after she was struck by the truck he was driving. What Fine has proven less willing to do, according to the parents of the late Rose Shatz, is serve even two months of his two-year sentence for unlicensed and negligent operation. Fine, 35, scheduled a parole hearing within two days of the start of his July 7 incarceration, according to the child's parents, Clifford Shatz and Joni Block of Willow Street in Foxboro. But the Massachusetts Parole Board last Friday denied Fine's bid for early release, the couple said. "A day or two after he got in there, he managed to get a parole hearing set. It made me feel like he's the only one who knows how to work the system," Shatz said. Fine is on administrative leave as a Mansfield police officer. In letters sent to the news media and to Mansfield's town manager, board of selectmen and police chief, the couple is opposing Fine's return to duties as a police officer. Rose Shatz, who was a fourth-grader at Burrell Elementary School in Foxboro, died in her father's arms Dec. 2, 2006, near the family's home after being struck by the off-duty police officer's dump truck. She was the couple's only child. The couple and another relative spoke Friday against Fine's early release during the hour-long hearing in Natick before two state parole board members. Fine made a statement seeking to have his two months of jail time reduced to one month, Shatz said. Shatz said the family was told it would hear the board's decision within 24 hours, but received word of Fine's parole denial in about 90 minutes. Shatz said said his family is not vindictive. "We really feel the full two months will give him some time to think about the kinds of decisions he made," Shatz said. Following a jury-waived trial, Superior Court Judge Paul Chernoff found Fine guilty May 22 of driving his family's landscaping truck negligently and without the proper license for the size of the truck he was operating when he struck the child. While acquitting Fine of the lead charge of motor vehicle homicide by negligent operation, Chernoff issued a special memorandum stating that, if this were a civil rather than criminal case, "this judge would find that it is more probable than not" that Fine's negligence caused the child's death. During a subsequent hearing on June 25, Chernoff sentenced Fine to a two-year term, with two months to be served in the House of Correction. Among the conditions of probation, the judge ordered that Fine undergo mental health counseling, abstain from driving for four months and perform 600 hours of community service approved by the probation department. The judge stayed the sentence for 14 days to allow the Norfolk County Sheriff's Office to make custody arrangements. Shatz said his family was told they would be notified when Fine began to serve his two months in jail. Hearing no word, Shatz said he began to make calls and learned on July 9 that Fine had begun to serve his sentence two days earlier - and had already scheduled a July 29 parole hearing. That hearing was moved up to last Friday at the request of Shatz and his wife. "We will never have our Rosie back with us," Block told the parole board in a statement. "She will never walk outside with us again. Yet, the man who killed her is requesting to walk outside early. He can go home to his children, he can play outside with them. He is requesting to go home early - to be released early - to serve only half of his two month sentence for taking away our girl." Block noted that in his sentencing statement, Chernoff wrote that incarceration should serve as a deterrent for the offender and others. "It is heinous to know that the person who knowingly and with intent broke the law, was pledged to uphold the law," Block said. "Let him serve the full sentence that Judge Chernoff passed, let him think about what he has done. Give the message to others, that that behavior and those actions will not be accepted." Shatz said Fine told the parole board he didn't know he had to have a special license to drive the dump truck. Shatz said he found such a claim by a police officer "absurd," and expressed his view to the board. On its Web site, the Massachusetts Parole Board defines parole, in part, as "the discretionary release of an inmate from confinement after he or she has served a portion of a prison sentence." It says that an inmate serving a "House of Correction sentence or total aggregate sentence of 60 days or more is eligible for parole after serving one-half of the total aggregate term of incarceration, or two years (whichever time period is shorter)." Don Giancioppo, the executive director and spokeman for the parole board, was unavailable for comment Tuesday. David Weber, spokesman for the Norfolk County Sheriff's Office, confirmed that Fine began to serve his two-month term on July 7. "He is being treated like any other high-profile inmate," Weber said. The decision on Fine's future status on the Mansfield Police Department will be up to Police Chief Arthur O'Neill, Town Manager John D'Agostino said. O'Neill did not return a phone message Tuesday.