Officer Marc Kelley is the first Texas Peace Officer to die in the line of duty this year. Officer Kelley was responding to a fire alarm on the Trinity University Campus. As he walked through the building where the fire alarm was located, Officer Kelley began having severe difficulties breathing. His radio was equipped with an officer emergency alarm, which the officer was able to activate before losing consciousness. Other police officers and fire fighters and arrived and rendered CPR; however, Officer Kelley never regained consciousness.
Officer Marc Kelley was only forty-one years old, young to have suffered a heart attack. Unfortunately many police officers over the years have suffered heart attacks while performing their duties, sometimes not knowing they had heart problems prior to the fatal heart attack. Officers in their twenties have suffered heart attacks while in police academies, in similar circumstances as when young athletes have collapsed during sports practice or just after. Officers who die due to illness while performing their duties should be, and hopefully are, honored in the same degree as officers killed by criminals or in police pursuits. These officers, though they died in less dramatic circumstances, still made the ultimate sacrifice, and still have a place of honor in that Thin Blue Line over yonder, that is ever growing, as these officers join their fallen but now risen colleagues on a Brighter Shore.
I am proud to honor Officer Kelley in this small blog, and thank him for his sacrifice. I offer my sympathy to his mother, brother, and niece, as well as to his fellow officers who have lost a partner and friend. Rest in peace, Officer Kelley.
Officer Marc Kelley was only forty-one years old, young to have suffered a heart attack. Unfortunately many police officers over the years have suffered heart attacks while performing their duties, sometimes not knowing they had heart problems prior to the fatal heart attack. Officers in their twenties have suffered heart attacks while in police academies, in similar circumstances as when young athletes have collapsed during sports practice or just after. Officers who die due to illness while performing their duties should be, and hopefully are, honored in the same degree as officers killed by criminals or in police pursuits. These officers, though they died in less dramatic circumstances, still made the ultimate sacrifice, and still have a place of honor in that Thin Blue Line over yonder, that is ever growing, as these officers join their fallen but now risen colleagues on a Brighter Shore.
I am proud to honor Officer Kelley in this small blog, and thank him for his sacrifice. I offer my sympathy to his mother, brother, and niece, as well as to his fellow officers who have lost a partner and friend. Rest in peace, Officer Kelley.
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