This is the 86th officer down this year. Since, July, it's been a bad year for officers being murdered. Here in Detroit, one officer was shot as she went to talk to a man about his dog not being on a leash. Another was coldbloodedly executed as he was arresting a different criminal. The thin blue line diminished just a little bit more on Friday.
<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font class="pn-sub">Quote:</font><HR></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT class="pn-sub"><BLOCKQUOTE>Beaumont police officer Conrad S. Gernale was killed in the line of duty Friday night, September 6.
Officer Gernale was 34 years old, and a 12 year veteran of the Beaumont Police Department. He leaves behind a wife and three young children, all under the age of 5. He was the only Filipino officer in the department.
Police say Officer Gernale was dispatched at about 11:10 pm to a disturbance in the 2200 block of Beatrice, near Concord.
He was responding to a report that a man had been involved in an altercation with his girlfriend and her father. Investigators say they had been assaulted with a bat. As officers arrived in the area, they observed a naked man running away.
Officer Gernale pursued the suspect on foot. The suspect managed to get into an older model Suburban. Officers at the scene say the man ran down Officer Gernale. They say he then drove the vehicle into a parked EMS unit. Three paramedics were injured.
Officer Gernale was dead at the scene. Beaumont officers took the suspect into custody.
The suspect is a twenty-three year old Beaumont man. Police officer Carman Apple says the man has been booked into jail on charges of capital murder of a police officer and aggravated assault. Formal charges are pending in the district attorney's office.
Officer Gernale is the first Beaumont police officer killed in the line of duty since March 22, 1988, when Paul Hulsey, Jr. was shot and killed by Michael Lee Lockhart.
Lockhart was executed for the crime. </BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>
[addsig]
