CABAZON: Slain Highway Patrol officer honored

Available as a free or low cost hire
Venue code: soe-v-1189017
Address:
180 180
180
180
180
Central African Republic

1:1 replica watches

Rolex watches


Phone: 180
Capacity: New York
Rates: 180
Payment options: 180

Facilities Available:
  • Within 10 minute walk of public transportWithin 10 minute walk of public transport
Availability:
  • Monday: AM, PM, Evening
  • Tuesday: AM, PM, Evening
  • Wednesday: AM, PM, Evening
  • Thursday: AM, PM, Evening
  • Friday: AM, PM, Evening
  • Saturday: AM, PM, Evening
  • Sunday: AM, PM, Evening


More Details

[b][url=http://www.replicawatches9.com/]1:1 replica watches[/url][/b]
[b][url=http://www.replicawatches9.com/rolex-watches-c-1338.html]Rolex watches[/url][/b]
copy watches
| replica swiss watches
| top brand watches

CABAZON: Slain Highway Patrol officer honored
November 19, 2013 by Darrell R. Santschi Kandie Shewmaker Cansler stands in front of the freeway sign honoring her first husband, who was slain in 1969.
watches STORY AND PHOTOS BY DARRELL R. SANTSCHI
Franck Muller CINTR The murder of a California Highway Patrol officer in Cabazon 44 years ago this coming Saturday was not just a family tragedy, his widow said Tuesday, Nov. 19.
Copy Glash It was a tragedy for an entire town: Yucaipa.
Ambers O. “Sonny” Shewmaker
Copy Franck Muller CINTR “We’re from a small town,” Kandie Shewmaker Cansler said. “Sonny grew up there. I grew up there. It was a personal affront to our town that one of our own young men was brutally murdered.”
replica rolex  
Copy Tudor Ocean Prince She was speaking to 150 law enforcement officers, family members and friends in the Beaumont Civic Center, where a freeway sign was unveiled that will mark a three-mile stretch of Interstate 10 in Cabazon to be renamed the Ambers O. “Sonny” Shewmaker Memorial Freeway.
Kandie Shewmaker Cansler speaks at freeway sign dedication.
The 1960 Redlands High School graduate and U.S. Army veteran was a Highway Patrol officer assigned to the Banning station on Nov. 24, 1969, when he made a traffic stop along the freeway and was fatally shot.
“After the funeral service,” his widow said at Tuesday’s ceremony, “the procession made its way to the cemetery through the streets of Yucaipa and those streets were lined with people who bowed their heads, saluted and placed their hands over their hearts.
“To me, personally,” she said, “I was a little bit numb at that point, but I did see them and it did make an impact on me and makes me very proud to be from such a caring small town.”
Even as the ceremony took place, Caltrans workers were erecting one of the signs along the freeway. The other, unveiled during the nearly two-hour ceremony, has signatures of Shewmaker family members on the back.
Chuck Shewmaker, the brother of the slain officer, and widow Kandie Shewmaker Cansler sign the back of the freeway sign.
It too was to be placed along the freeway, CHP spokesman Darren Meyer said, and officers were expected to lay flowers in front of it.
“Most people who pass by … won’t know what exactly happened,” CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow told the audience, but they will know “it stands for something good. It stands for heroics. It stands for a man who left everything on the field.”
a table-top memorial shows a photograph of the slain officer, coins struck in his honor and a replica of the freeway sign honoring him.
Farrow told how a fellow airline passenger remarked that the fatal shooting had occurred a “very long time ago.”
“Not for those who were there,” Farrow said he responded. “It’s just a moment ago. Memories and the pain are still there as though it happened yesterday.”
He addressed Shewmaker’s widow, who has since remarried.
“You being here forces you, but also allows you to travel memory lane,” he said. “Memory lane is normally good. It’s a reflective time in people’s lives.”
He told her that memories of the tragedy are painful, but “as you look around this room you are surrounded by friends and family members who love you and loved Sonny … It’s going to be a good day because today is the day where the state of California pays its highest distinction, its highest award to public service.”
Eddie Conner, who had served as Shewmaker’s patrol partner, said speaking at the dedication ceremony was the second highest honor of his life, surpassed only by being named to the honor guard at Shewmaker’s funeral.
He thanked a group of civilians who stopped along the freeway in the aftermath of the shooting and called for help. He, Shewmaker’s widow and Farrow paid tribute to then-Palm Springs police Sgt. Bill Valkenburg, who arrested the killer later the same day as the shooting.
Valkenburg, who went on to become chief of the Palm Springs department, did not speak at the ceremony.
In an interview afterward, he said he and several other Palm Springs officers positioned themselves to watch traffic entering the city after an initial radio report told them to be on the lookout for a Buick driven by a hit-and-run driver who had injured a Highway Patrol officer in the San Gorgonio Pass.
The car turned out to be a stolen Oldsmobile, he said, and the driver “just punched it and took off” when another officer tried to stop him. Valkenburg, then a newly promoted police sergeant, joined the pursuit.
The suspect led police on a high-speed chase through residential neighborhoods, he said, before returning to Highway 111 and then out into the desert. At one point, the other officer’s car spun out in the sand and Valkenburg said he was alone in the chase.
The suspect’s car “got stuck in the sand,” Valkenburg said. “I ordered him out of the car at gunpoint, not knowing what I had yet. He did cooperate, got out and got on the ground. As I moved toward him I saw a semi-automatic pistol on the front seat where his hand had been.”
It wasn’t until after other officers arrived and the suspect, Gene Myrick, had been placed in the back of a police car that Valkenburg learned via police radio that an officer had been shot to death.
“I knew Shoemaker slightly,” Valkenburg said. “We both graduated from Redlands High School. He was a year ahead of me. I just hope it’s closure for the family.”
Wyrick, who had taken $142 in a robbery in Riverside, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
Kandie Shewmaker Cansler listens to speakers at ceremony honoring her slain husband. Beside her on a chair is a white rose and flag presented to her during the ceremony.
Cansler told the audience Tuesday that Wyrick’s death sentence was later commuted.
“I was OK with that as long as he stayed in prison,” she said. “But then, amazing as it seems, he began coming up for parole about every three years. We had a nightmare to worry about. It bothered me a lot to think that he would be out on the street some day again.”
Her worries were relieved, she said, when she got a phone call from a victim’s advocacy group telling her that Wyrick had died of a heart attack in prison in 2006.
When they heard that, the audience applauded.
Kandie Shewmaker Cansler looks at newly unveiled freeway sign honoring her slain husband.
“I just want everybody to know I’ve had a good life,” Cansler said. “It started out a little rocky. I found out I am a survivor.”
Filed Under: Breaking News , Crime Blotter , Law Enforcement/Public Safety City: Beaumont , Yucaipa
More by Author
HEMET: Police chase, arrest vehicle theft suspect MORENO VALLEY: Brothel near school raided SAN JACINTO: Man stabbed on Commonwealth Avenue (UPDATE) SAN BERNARDINO: Homeless man severely beaten CABAZON: Freeway section to be named for slain officer
Comments
You can now use other social accounts besides Facebook to log in and comment on this story -- Twitter, Google+, Yahoo and more! Comments are subject to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service . Comments may appear in other featured positions such as letters to the editor.
Comments Loading…
1:1 replica watches

Rolex watches



Restrictions:

1:1 replica watches

Rolex watches



Everything is yours

School of Everything's venue listings are added and edited by our members, and sometimes the information is incomplete. If you see something missing, or incorrect, you can, jump right in and fix it. But you will need to join or login first. (Don't worry, we have backups.) Learn more about venues.


Add the first review

Write a review

Don't be shy, say hello. We'd love to hear from you.


[email protected]