Updated: 11:33 AM CDT May 7, 2021
KOCO Staff
The names of 11 law enforcement officers and one canine partner who died in the line of duty were dedicated on the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Memorial during a ceremony Friday morning.The 53rd annual Oklahoma Law Enforcement Memorial Service took place at 10 a.m. The memorial is the oldest state memorial honoring its fallen officers in the United States and was dedicated May 15, 1969. It’s located on the west grounds of the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety Headquarters, at 3600 Martin Luther King Ave. in Oklahoma City.According to a news release from Oklahoma City police, the eleven fallen officers and one canine partner being dedicated are:Jesse Whitfield Morris, Deputy Sheriff, Washita County, died Feb. 3, 1910, from complications from a gunshot wound to his lungs on Dec. 8, 1900, attempting to arrest three men who were causing a disturbance.John Sanders, Deputy Sheriff, Adair County, died Sept. 14, 1915, during a shootout at a dance where he had arrested several bootleggers.W. H. Corder, Deputy Sheriff, Ottawa County, was shot and killed Oct. 23, 1917, as he entered a store that he had attempted to search for illegal whiskey the night before but for unknown reasons was unable to search the store at that time.Raymond Thomas “Buck” Boston, Sheriff, Montgomery County, Illinois, died July 23, 1947, in a traffic accident on U.S. 66 near Sayre along with the prisoner that he and one of his deputies, were transporting from Arizona back to Illinois for trial.Dale Maloy Harbolt, Special Agent, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, U.S. Treasury Department, died June 7, 1976, when the ATF Cessna aircraft he was piloting from the ATF office in Dallas, Texas, crashed when it had a fuel problem and struck power lines in Oklahoma City. John Chukwydiut Okafor, Corporal, Detention Officer, Tulsa County, died the afternoon of April 15, 2020, within an hour of suffering an on-duty heart attack in the Tulsa County jail.Craig Vincent Johnson, Sergeant, Tulsa Police Department, died June 30, 2020, from gunshot wounds received early the morning of June 29 while backing Officer Aurash Zackeshan, who was also wounded, by the driver of a vehicle he had made a traffic stop on. Jeffery Wade Sewell, Captain, Oklahoma Highway Patrol, died Sept. 26, 2020, from complications of the COVID-19 virus he had contracted on duty and admitted to a Denison, Texas, hospital on Sept. 5, 2020.Jerad Matthew Lindsey, Officer, Tulsa Police Department, died Oct. 28, 2020, from complications of the COVID-19 virus he had contracted on duty and admitted to a Tulsa hospital on Oct. 19, 2020. Billy Dewayne Allen, Sr., U.S. Department of Defense – Fort Sill Police Department, died Dec. 6, 2020, from complications of the COVID-19 virus he had contracted on duty.Lindal “Dewayne” Hall, Chief Deputy Sheriff, McIntosh County, died Dec. 14, 2020, from complications of the COVID-19 virus he had contracted on duty two weeks earlier.Canine Partner Oli, Muskogee Police Department, died the evening of July 1, 2020, at a veterinary hospital soon after being found unresponsive in his canine unit by his handler Officer Taylor Hignite shortly after being placed there following a tracking exercise at the Muskogee Police Department gun range.