Friday’s Heroes: Remembering the Fallen

Friday's Heroes - Remembering the fallen officers

Officer Spree Desha, 35

Los Angels California Police Department

Officer Desha was killed on September 12, 2008, in the recent collision of a passenger train and commuter train in Los Angeles, California. She was in uniform at the time of the crash. Officer Desha leaves behind her partner and parents.

Sergeant Michael Weigand, Jr., 25

Latimore Township Pennsylvania Police Department

 

Sergeant Weigand was killed on September 14, 2008, when an oncoming pickup truck lost control and hit the officer’s motorcycle head on. Sergeant Weigand leaves behind a wife, a four year-old daughter , and his parents.

4 replies
  1. Ken Lewis
    Ken Lewis says:

    Sometimes I forget…or simply choose not to think about…how
    dangerous this profession of law enforcement really is. I have lost
    another friend, Christine Fairbanks, a U.S. Forest Service law
    enforcement officer, who was killed in the line of duty yesterday
    afternoon. I knew her and her husband, Brian Fairbanks, both very well
    when I was an officer on the Olympic Peninsula and lived in Forks,
    WA., where they still live. Brian is also a law enforcement officer
    with Washington State. Chris was checking a suspicious vehicle
    yesterday afternoon on a remote mountain road near Sequim in Clallam
    County, WA when the driver shot and killed her. He in turn was shot
    and killed later in the evening by two deputies at a convenience
    store. He had apparently also killed a man in order to steal the van
    he was in when Chris stopped him. After eight years of marriage my
    wife is finally starting to understand why I do strange things like
    take a loaded pistol and leave it on a chair hidden beneath the towels
    next to the hot tub were basking in at a remote mountain cabin while
    on vacation. Why my Glock 9mm is just like an American Express
    Card…because I never leave home without it. Yet still, with all the
    precautions officers take, both on and off duty, this incident only
    goes to prove that we can never be cautious enough. In her career
    Chris made thousands of contacts like this with motorists, many of
    which probably seemed at the time to be potentially more dangerous
    than this one. But this man managed to take her by surprise, to shoot
    first, and so now she is dead. The reason she stopped the van was
    because it had no rear license plate; the suspect had obviously taken
    it off because he had just killed the van’s owner. I would never have
    approached that van alone, and if circumstances had forced me to, I
    would have had my Glock out of the holster, gripped in both hands and
    ready to fire. But I don’t want to second guess her, maybe she did
    just that. Maybe the guy emerged from cover outside the van and
    ambushed her, or shot her through a rear window as she approached.
    Thank God for the two Clallam County Deputies who crossed paths with
    this psychopath, had the courage to stand their ground and exchange
    gunfire with him, and killed him.

  2. SZ
    SZ says:

    I agree with mn. I am late to site sometimes, but always read them.

    That train wreck in LA was bad. I had read about the officer when it happened.

    My first boyfriend had a bike, so a motorcycle crash is always bad news.

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