JOSHUA, Texas (AP) _ About 1,200 mourners, many of them in law enforcement uniform, crowded into a North Texas high school auditorium to pay tribute to a North Texas sheriff’s deputy killed in a shootout with an Oklahoma man that also left the suspect dead.
Johnson County Sheriff’s Deputy Clifton Taylor was eulogized by his boss, Sheriff Bob Alford, for his devotion to duty.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports Alford told mourners that in his law enforcement career, he had always been able to tell his wife at the end of the day that no one had died. He said, “That all changed on Saturday.”
That’s when the 31-year-old deputy died in a shootout while he and two colleagues responded to a domestic disturbance call in the small town of Venus.
(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)