The Law Enforcement Memorial of Sedgwick County isn't even finished yet, and organizers will need to add another name.
The newest name on the memorial is one of the newest deputies with the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Department. Brian Etheridge graduated from the most recent class of the law enforcement training academy in December. He was 26, and he never saw the man who killed him. He had been on solo duty for about 7 months when he was shot in the back by a man hiding in the shadows of a back yard on the last Monday in September.
Now his 2-year-old daughter, Natalie, will never get to see her daddy again. She'll grow up without really knowing him, except through pictures and stories that her mommy will share about him. Sarah Etheridge didn't take her daughter to the funeral on Friday. How could she possibly comprehend all those flags, all those people standing up stiff and straight, all those tears...
It almost certainly hasn't sunk in yet that daddy isn't coming home. Not today. Not ever. All because he had the bad luck to be dispatched on a seemingly harmless call to collect information on a theft reported at a house just east of McConnell Air Force Base.
One day, though, when she is older, Natalie will watch the video of her father's funeral and see how much people cared about him and what he meant to the community. She'll read stories and talk to his academy classmates and fellow law enforcement officers and he'll become more than a memory.
And one day she'll go to the corner of Central and Main and sit in the quiet space where the names and the shoes of the fallen officers are on display and reflect on their courage and their duty and their sacrifice. There, perhaps more than anywhere else, she may sense her father's spirit, and why it was so important to him to protect and serve his hometown.
Her hometown.
And she'll be proud.
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