Deputy Shane Thomas Detwiler

My wife and I took a day of vacation Friday to work on a remodeling project we’ve had going on at our house. While we were off we decided to take some time to help honor one of our local law enforcement officials who had be killed in the line of duty on Monday. Chambers County sheriff's deputy Shane Thomas Detwiler was a 31-year-old Baytown man with a wife and three small children 4 years old and younger.

We had read in the paper that citizens were invited to come out and help line Garth Rd. in Baytown from I-10 to Memory Gardens Cemetery along the route the funeral procession would be traveling in route to the deputy’s final resting place. The paper asked that you try and be in place by 10:30 so we arrived about 10:15 to stake out a place.

We new the turn out would be great for an officer killed in the line of duty but we were not prepared for the response we witnessed. When the head of procession arrived, judging by the number of vehicles that passed us, we would estimate that the rear of the line must have been 5 miles down the road! First responders from all over Southeast Texas participated. We saw fireman, policemen, sheriffs, constables, game wardens, EMS, rescue personnel and more in what must have been at least 500 official vehicles. They came from Houston, Baytown, Chambers County, Winnie/Stowell, Beaumont, LaPorte, Pasadena, Orange, Lufkin, Dayton, Liberty, Galveston, and many more cities that I’m sure we missed.

Citizen participation was great as well. Even though the procession didn’t arrive until 12:30, which left us in the heat for about 3 hours, we were glad we had the chance to participate. It was the kind of send-off deputy Detwiler and all our fine law-enforcement agents killed in the line of duty deserve. Although his friends and family have a lot to deal with in the coming years I’m sure they will always remember this day and be comforted by the support they saw.