- 1 min read
- Posted on 11.05.08
I missed Chief Dan Isom’s swearing-in tonight. He will be a great police chief, and I would like to have been there to congratulate him formally and to wish him well. But, tragedy intervened and I went to a hospital instead. A good Samaritan died.
The same brave and generous impulses that made Leonard Riggins a great firefighter also made him the sort of person you’d want to be passing by if you were in an accident. Trained to provide assistance in emergencies and willing to do so even while on his way home, Firefighter Riggins stopped his department vehicle tonight to help at an accident in St Louis county. The other driver was, apparently, fleeing a crime and used the occasion of Leonard Riggins’s good intention to shoot him and steal his car.
It was a stupid act of violence that took one of our neighbors from us. I offer my condolences to his family.
Later tonight, I will issue an order lowering the City’s own flags to half-staff in mourning.
UPDATE: Gov. Matt Blunt has now authorized US flags at public buildings in the City of St. Louis to be lowered in mourning.
