It took one drunken punch outside a Lakewood bar to end Matt Hockey’s life

But on Sunday morning, with Matt still not answering the phone, Verlotti called her ex-husband, Matt's dad. Martin Hockey headed to his son's apartment and, after a downstairs neighbor let him in, found his way to the third floor. Matt's door was ajar and a strong odor filled the place; Matt's cat had defecated on the living-room floor, and the gas space heater was on full blast. Hockey walked to the bedroom, but he didn't see Matt, just the white down comforter covering his bed. He checked the kitchen and bathroom. Nothing out of place, no sign of anything gone awry. Then he went back to the bedroom. This time, he pulled back the comforter.

"By the grace of God I didn't get in there Saturday night," says Verlotti. "I wouldn't have been able to deal with finding my son."

At Ripepi Funeral Home in Parma, the line to see Matthew Hockey extends out the door. Friends and family file past his mom and dad, past his old hockey jerseys, and past his son, Ethan, his seventh birthday just a week away. Of the few conversations taking place, one in the lobby centers on the "asshole that did this."

Four days earlier, 23-year-old Derrick Dykas turned himself in to Lakewood police. A native of Ypsilanti, Michigan, Dykas works for a Michigan-based cable company, says Lakewood Police Chief Timothy Malley, but was on a job in Columbus at the time of the fight and in Lakewood for the weekend. His single drunken punch — the sort of thing that happens, or almost happens, outside Lakewood bars every weekend, with little fanfare — had been freakishly punishing: It fractured Hockey's skull and caused blood to pool up behind his brain until it killed him.

Dykas was arraigned in Lakewood, posted $100,000 bond, and is now awaiting indictment by the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office. (He couldn't be reached for this story.) But aside from the lone conversation in the funeral-home lobby, Hockey's death has lacked the normal backlash of vigilance that often accompanies such fluke deaths. No one has questioned the bar's security or the Lakewood police's presence on Detroit Avenue. They've focused instead, it seems, on mourning Hockey, in tacit agreement with Chief Malley and his assessment that nothing could have been done.

"You're not gonna prevent that," Malley says. "It was very quick, very fast, and it was over in seconds."