St. Paul Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL — In a room adorned with sketches by St. Paul school children, all of them praising police, St. Paul police officer David Longbehn’s battered black eyes teared up.
“This is nothing. I am so lucky to be standing here with just this,” he said of his injuries during a Wednesday night news conference at St. Paul police headquarters. “There’s a family of a member of the law enforcement community who is there without their dad and without their husband and without their son and brother.”
A few hours earlier, Longbehn had consoled the family of slain Maplewood police Sgt. Joseph Bergeron during visitation at the Maplewood Community Center.
He described the meeting with Bergeron’s family in two words: “incredibly emotional.”
“The real hero here is Sgt. Joe Bergeron. He’s the hero that came first and foremost and confronted the suspects. So if there’s anybody that’s a hero, it’s Sgt. Joe Bergeron,” he added on the eve of the officer’s funeral today at the Cathedral of St. Paul.
During the manhunt Saturday morning for Bergeron’s killers, Longbehn was guarding a perimeter on St. Paul’s East Side. At 10:34 a.m., Jason Jones emerged from the woods and attacked Longbehn with a large metal bolt, according to police.
Jones, who reportedly fired the shot that killed Bergeron, repeatedly struck Longbehn in the face, breaking his nose and eye sockets and knocking him down. As Jones straddled Longbehn, the officer shot the 21-year-old St. Paul man several times, killing him.
“I think we all know as young policemen and old policemen that there may come a time when you have to take risks,” said Longbehn, 52.
St. Paul police spokesman Paul Schnell said Longbehn could not discuss Saturday’s events because of the ongoing investigation of Jones’ alleged accomplice as well as the possibility of civil litigation.
But Longbehn did say that when he was called in on his day off to join the manhunt, he was struck by how similar the circumstances were to Aug. 26, 1994, when St. Paul police officers Ron Ryan Jr. and Timothy Jones were shot and killed by a drifter on the East Side.
“Ronnie was killed about the same time as Sgt. Bergeron,” he said. “And Tim Jones was on his day off and had come in to hunt for the killers. And as I was driving out there, it brought me back to those days back in 1994, and the eerie similarity that was there.”
Longbehn is assigned to the police department’s K-9 unit; so was Jones, whose dog Laser was also shot to death by his killer.
On Monday, Jones’ alleged accomplice, Joshua Martin, 21, of St. Paul was charged with intentional second-degree murder and kidnapping in the killing of the officer and the reported carjacking Bergeron was investigating.
Authorities said Bergeron, 49, was ambushed and shot once in the head as he sat in his squad car on the Bruce Vento Trail near Arlington Avenue. A jogger on the trail witnessed the attack and called for help using Bergeron’s police radio.
Martin, who was arrested later Saturday at a St. Paul apartment, was being held Wednesday in the Ramsey County Jail on $2 million bail.
Copyright 2010 St. Paul Pioneer Press