By Nicholas K. Geranios
Associated Press
SPOKANE, Wash. — Hundreds of people gathered at a candlelight vigil for a veteran police officer who was shot and killed while patrolling a northern Idaho neighborhood, some traveling from out of state and others paying tribute to the sacrifice of a lawman they didn’t know.
“It’s just amazing that people who don’t even know him, they come out and support everything he stood for,” Don Eckles, a close friend of fallen Coeur d’Alene police Sgt. Greg Moore, told The Spokesman-Review newspaper of Spokane, Washington.
Eckles, a resident of Sparks, Nevada, said he heard about the shooting, got on a plane and came to Idaho. Moore was critically wounded early Tuesday and died that evening.
Jonathan Renfro, 26, of Rathdrum, has been charged with shooting the officer, stealing his patrol car and leading authorities on a high-speed chase. A search for the suspect ended when a police dog dragged him from his hiding place underneath a commercial truck, authorities said. He’s being held in jail on $2 million bail.
The vigil Tuesday in Coeur d’Alene honored Moore, a husband and father of two who was a 16-year veteran of the city police department. He began his career as a deputy sheriff in Asotin County, Washington, in late 1997 and started in Coeur d’Alene in 1999.
“This is not something we see all across the U.S.,” Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White told the crowd, which included city workers, elected officials, officers from around the region, church leaders and others. “I am truly grateful to be a part of this community.”
Moore was shot about 1:30 a.m. while checking on a suspicious person in a neighborhood, White said.
“He was out doing routine random patrols in an area that we have experienced some auto burglaries in. So he was doing what we do. It’s just incredibly tragic,” city police spokeswoman Sgt. Christie Wood told KREM-TV of Spokane.
Moore called dispatch to get information on Renfro, White said. Not long after, a resident called police.
The person “had heard a noise that sounded like a gunshot, and they shortly after said that there was a body lying in the street,” White said at a news conference.
“From the information I’ve received so far, it doesn’t look like an ambush-style attack,” the chief said. “This was just a bad guy doing bad guy stuff and our officers doing what they were trained to do — and that’s trying to keep our communities safe.”
An officer from nearby Post Falls was listening to radio traffic about the shooting and saw a Coeur d’Alene police car race by at about 90 mph, so he gave chase close to the Washington state line, with speeds reaching 125 mph, Post Falls Police Chief Scott Haug said.
The officer found the patrol car abandoned, and authorities set up a perimeter, Haug said.
A police dog found Renfro about two hours later hiding under a tractor-trailer, wedged off the ground between the axle area and the truck, near a Wal-Mart, Haug said.
“He was engaged by the dog when he would not comply and taken into custody,” Haug said.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press