Sad Day fir Our Town

[kmrra]

At 10;30 this morning ,a good friend of mine who was a retired City Policeman and currently working for the Sherriffs Office was gunned down by his own son and then he killed himself, My wife texted me this morning of the news .
I could not describe the feeling I had in my stomach when I herd this. Yu read about this in the news or on the TV but is diffrent when it hits closer to home. I live in a town of about 10000 and we very seldom have a murder, maybe every 10 years or so Makes a person sit back and think for a while.

http://www.texomashomepage.com/news/local-news/graham-police-release-identities-of-two-men-found-dead-in-a-home/645927160

[shoot-n-lead]

Sorry to hear this.

Prayer sent.

[OutHuntn84]

Dang...sorry for your loss. Can drive you crazy trying to wrap your head around those things. Will be praying for y'all down there.

[bubba.50]

condolences to the survivors & wishing them strength to deal with the pain & bewilderment.

don't know what would make anyone want to kill themselves but, if life sucks that much for ya, go ahead on. but why-oh-why do they always have to take so many innocent people with them?

[kmrra]

Its beyond me

[buckwheatpaul]

kmrra, I am sorry for your loss....like you we live in a very small town and when something like this happens it strikes your heart. In that small environment when some one dies violently it is likely that you know the individual. This just compounds the loss. You cant make sense of an act that is not rational and only the son knew why. Do not dwell on it. Say a prayer for them and remember the good things that they did. Paul

[bedbugbilly]

Prayers your way. So sorry for the loss of your friend and he loss to your community. buckwheat gives some good advice. Sometimes no one will know the reason why such things happened. Over the years, I've seen this scenario several times or very similar when I was working FD and rescue. It haunts you but you have to realize that there are a lot of troubled people out there and not all of them seek help or have help made available to them . . . all of a sudden it just boils over and bad things happen. Remember the good times with your friend and keep his memory alive that way . . . and pray for those of the family left behind. A very sad situation for sure . . . .

[WILCO]

Sorry to hear this.

Prayer sent.

Yes. Very painful to learn of.

[Isaac]

Very sorry for the loss of your good friend.

Condolences to the survivors.

Isaac

[trapper9260]

Sorry to hear about .I live out side of a town that is about 260 I am 4 miles outside of town and it is not easy when hear of something like that happened prayers sent to all.I had a co workers that done just himself after work. He was very trouble.

[Teddy (punchie)]

praying for you all Sorry to hear the sad news .

[Blackwater]

Wow! What a horrible thing to happen anywhere! Cops labor under a constant problem. To do their job, they're always gone from home on holidays and weekends, so don't have a lot of opportunity to really be as much of a father as most folks do. And it's not unusual for their kids to take that hard, and go wrong, and find it to be reason to feel "left out" or "uncared for." It's a recurrent theme, and nobody yet has found a way to alleviate it. Folks simply won't pay for as many cops as it'd take to let them get some "quality time" in with their families. Divorce, too, is more frequent than with the bulk of our population. But nobody ever talks about this, lest it dissuade some fine folks from becoming LEO's.

God bless and be with the family, and forgive the son, and find some way, within the scope of His omniscience, to make it better for all concerned. When I first got out of college, all I wanted to do in the whole world was be as State Trooper. It was as close to being a "cowboy" as you could get then. You just rode herd over traffic instead of cattle. I'm not sure which is the most willful and dangerous! But I always figured I could handle it. When that wasn't to be, I settled for something else, and eventually, realized that had I become a Trooper, I'd never have been able to raise my son the way I did. And he came out so good, I'm now glad I didn't get what I wanted, though I still miss having gotten the opportunity now and then. We all have our regrets, and things we're glad for. This is just mine.

I just wish more folks knew what police officers of all stripes sacrifice even today, for the "public safety." It takes a special type of man to be a cop of any sort, and a very good one. And the price they pay sometimes, is .... well, it's way beyond what anyone would normally suspect. God be with these and with all LEO's in our land. They do as tough a job as our soldiers, and get far less respect, because they have the nerve to stop us and say, "You can't do that" now and then. God richly bless all of them, and those who have retired from it. What they do matters, and it matters more than almost anybody, including themselves, will ever really appreciate.

[LUBEDUDE]

Very sad indeed.

[Thin Man]

Similar thing happened here many years ago. We had a police officer (we worked together) who was a single father to one son. We were close friends. This father was something of a gypsy - he moved often from job to job but was always wearing a badge. His son was always with him and grew up stubborn and hard to control. The father re-married, his wife got pregnant with her first child, and then the father got a job that required him to live (during the work week) in a separate town from where his wife and he had bought a house. The son stayed at the father's house. One evening the father came home from work and had a spat with his son. Later that evening the son took the father's issue sidearm from the holster and shot his father in the back of the head. The widowed mother was still pregnant. The son was 16 years old and went off to serve time for the murder. About 8 years after my friend's death I was in a local store and the son walked in the front doors. The sight took my breath away. He looked exactly like his father except for the very long hair and "thousand yard stare" in his eyes. He had bulked up and looked tough as a rock and angry at the world. I waited until he moved away from the doors and left the store trying to keep from throwing up at what I had just seen. Then, about 23 or so years after my friend's death, a young lady came to our office looking for anyone still working there who remembered her father. Two of us from the department sat with her for a couple of hours telling her stories about the father she had never met. When she left she was happy to have learned so much about him. That meeting also gave my soul a lot of comfort. Ever sharing this story adds to my peace about our friendship and the good times we shared together.

Thin Man