By Pat Reavy
Deseret News
When a West Valley woman suffered an accident over the weekend and died in her backyard, one of the first things police officers tried to do was to notify her husband.
Investigators learned the man was visiting relatives in Idaho but had difficulty communicating with him. Eventually, police sent out a description of his vehicle to officers throughout Idaho and Utah, asking for help in locating him.
For many family members, it’s their worst nightmare: Hearing a knock on the door at an hour when most people are asleep, and finding a pair of law enforcers standing on the porch.
The officers will typically ask if they can come in and then if the relative would like to be seated. But before the officers say anything, most family members have already figured out why they are there. They can read it in the eyes of their visitors.
Still, it doesn’t make what the officers have to say next any easier.
“We’re sorry to inform you that your loved one has been killed in an accident.”
For officers of any agency, making such notifications is one of, if not the, hardest part of their job. And no matter how many times an officer has had to deliver the tragic news, it never gets easier.
Many times when a story is written in the media about a fatal incident, police will withhold the name of the victim “pending notification of next of kin.”
But sometimes making that notification isn’t always easy.
Sometimes the next of kin are vacationing out of state or country, sometimes they are estranged from the family, or sometimes, as in the case of transients, it’s been decades since the victim has had any contact at all with their families.
“We won’t just leave messages. We need personal contact with somebody. If we can’t find immediate family, we’ll find extended family or neighbors or clergy,” Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Lt. Don Hutson said.
If family members are out of state, law enforcers will typically call a police agency or local clergy in that state to make the notifications.
Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Kellie Oaks said in one notification incident she had, Honolulu police were contacted to notify parents vacationing in Hawaii.
But sometimes it takes investigators extra effort to find family members, and they need to release the name of the victim in hopes of finding the parents.
Salt Lake police still have not been able to locate family members of a bicyclist hit by a car on June 22. Sidney Maybine, 58, a Vietnam War veteran, was killed after he was rear-ended by a 51-year-old woman who apparently went into diabetic shock while driving.
Notifications affect not only the lives of the person receiving the news but the officer delivering it as well.
The notification has to be done in an extremely professional manner, because that image and the words of the officer making the announcement will be something the victim’s family will remember forever, Oaks said.
“We do our best to do it as quickly as we can and as compassionately as we can. You’re permanently a part of this person’s history. You want it professional.”
When delivering the news, the Rev. Steve Kirts, the senior chaplain in the nine-member Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office volunteer Chaplain Corps., said there is a right way, and a wrong way, to do it.
“You can’t candy-coat it. You can’t use euphemisms such as, ‘Your husband has passed,” said Kirts, who often finds himself praying in his car on his way to make the notification.
“It’s a totally unique experience each time. There’s no set way or pattern to do it. You can’t speculate on what you think people want to hear. You need to be honest, gentle and non-judgmental.”
Most departments have officers go in pairs or have an officer accompanied by a chaplain.
“It’s just heartbreaking. We cry with them. There’s no way of getting around that,” Oaks said. “You’re looking into their eyes and you know they’re thinking a million things.”
The time it takes to walk inside the house and sit down before delivering the actual news sometimes feels like an eternity to the officers, she said.
But sometimes, it’s obvious why the police are at the door. Both Oaks and Kirts said they have seen relatives collapse to their knees before any words are ever spoken.
“I’ve seen people drop into hysterics and you have to call paramedics,” he said. “You’re never comfortable doing it, and I’ve been doing it for 28 years now.”
“It’s absolutely gut-wrenching. It’s not something anyone gets real comfortable doing,” Hutson said.
After delivering the tragic news, officers will stay with the family until their own clergy or another loved one can be with them.
“The worst thing you can do is drop the bomb and then leave,” Kirts said. “I don’t know of any officer, or anybody, who likes death notifications.
You’re getting people right at the core of their humanity. There are no magic words to take away the pain. I wish there were. The pain is going to happen, no matter if it was a long severe chronic illness or whether it’s an unexpected traffic accident or homicide.”
One of the worst things that can happen is a family finding out about the tragic death of a loved one through the media.
“Nothing is worse than sitting down, watching the 10 p.m. news and finding out your loved one has died. No matter what the circumstances, it’s a bad deal all around,” said West Valley Police Capt. Tom McLachlan.
That’s why names of victims are sometimes not released until days after they die.
“If we’re going to err, we’re going to err on the side of caution,” McLachlan said.
In one extremely rare occasion, Kirts said he made a death notification on someone who wasn’t actually dead.
An ex-husband living back east was trying to get back at his former wife, and had his local police department call the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office to have them notify her that her son had died. Because of that incident several years ago, the sheriff’s office has put stronger checks and balances in place to verify information coming in from an outside agency.
Copyright 2009 Deseret News