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FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office unveiled its memorial for fallen officers Wednesday.
A full of 21 prima badges are mounted connected the waterfall wall, representing 21 radical killed successful the enactment of duty.
“It’s astir remembrance and it’s astir honor,” retired Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said.
Local leaders spoke and household members paid tribute during the ceremony. One of those families was that of correctional serviceman Toamalama Scanlan.
“Today means a batch to us. It's conscionable a mode to retrieve and grant my beloved husband,” Toamalama’s wife, Tepatasi Scanlan, said.
She laid flowers astatine the memorial for her husband, arsenic his sanction present sits permanently mounted adjacent to his brothers’.
“10.12.2021,” Scanlan said, reflecting connected the time her hubby died. “He was changeable astatine the lobby of the Fresno County Jail.”
Her daughters and niece honored Toamalama with a Polynesian taste dedication dance.
Theirs were not the lone glossy eyes successful the crowd, though.
Mims is each excessively acquainted with the names connected the wall.
“Ten of those connected the partition occurred during my instrumentality enforcement career,” Mims said. “Every azygous sheriff that’s mislaid idiosyncratic made that committedness to ne'er forget. So we had an accidental to marque that committedness physical, and this is the carnal manifestation of that promise.”
Scanlan says the partition is simply a beauteous tribute, but she leans connected thing overmuch sturdier.
“We person religion and that's what keeps america going,” Scanlan said. “I’m astatine bid knowing that I volition spot him again.”
She hopes erstwhile others sojourn the wall, they consciousness the aforesaid bid – knowing officers similar her hubby are protecting them.
