Patrolman Bryan Scott Verkler: the hometown line

1994 graduate – 13 December 2003 · tie: RAISED here; the case is Mishawaka's

The line, at the strength the flag directs: Bryan Verkler was Walkerton's. The South Bend Tribune's tenth-anniversary account calls him "the Walkerton native"; the Tribune's 2003 reporting gives him as a graduate of John Glenn High School in Walkerton, class of 1994 — and, before the badge, an athlete of record: at Vincennes University he placed eighth in the shot put at the National Junior Championships of 1995, on USA Track & Field's own record. He worked first with the St. Joseph County Police, then two and a half years with the Mishawaka Police Department. On 13 December 2003 he and Corporal Thomas Roberts answered a shots-fired call at 125 East Battell Street in Mishawaka; the gunman had gone to a house on Sarah Street, and when the officers moved to take him, he opened fire. Roberts died at the scene; Verkler, shot in the shoulder and upper chest, died in surgery about two hours later — the Officer Down Memorial Page's end of watch: Saturday, 13 December 2003. He was 27, married that May in La Jolla, California, to Juli Verkler. The case — the crime, the record, the memorial ground — belongs whole to Mishawaka's build, where it stands; this section carries the hometown line only, and it is a family's line as much as a man's: his father, Randy Verkler, and his brother, Brett Verkler, were both members of the Walkerton Police DepartmentHis funeral was held at Bethel College; his burial followed "in Verkler's hometown of Walkerton," in the Tribune's words. A Walkerton police family raised a Mishawaka patrolman; both halves of that sentence are the record, and the file prints them in their own cities.

Sources:

1. Officer Down Memorial Page, "Patrolman Bryan Scott Verkler" — end of watch 13 December 2003, service 2½ years, the incident account, the family line.
2. South Bend Tribune, December 2003 and 13 December 2013 (via Officer.com and Police1 archives) — the John Glenn class of 1994, the Vincennes shot put record, father Randy and brother Brett of the Walkerton Police Department, mother Carolyn at John Glenn High School, burial in Walkerton.
3. The crime pass of this build (W-4) — the case banked as Mishawaka's; Brett Verkler's 2010 rescue account in the Rozinski record there.