Officer Down: Officer Mason Samborski
Ann Arbor News
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Officer Mason Samborski could have arrested the 16-year-old boy he caught driving without a license in the early morning hours of Dec. 28.
Instead, the 28-year-old officer tried to show compassion by putting the teen in his squad car and driving him home.
“And that’s when things went terribly, terribly wrong,” said Oak Park Public Safety Director John McNeilance during Samborski’s funeral three days after the Howell resident died from a gunshot wound to the head.
That teen, Jonathan Belton, now faces first-degree murder charges as an adult in the shooting of Samborski in the Detroit suburb where he worked. He was arraigned Jan. 2 in Oakland County and is being held without bond. A not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf and a court hearing is set for Jan. 16.
Police said Samborski was shot when he and the teen got into a struggle as the officer sought someone to take responsibility for Belton at his apartment complex.
McNeilance said officers constantly deal with a subculture of juvenile violence and a disregard for human life.
In a visible antidote to that, hundreds of uniformed officers from across the state drove to St. Patrick Catholic Church in Brighton to honor the fallen officer at his funeral last week.
Beth Ziemba, mother of Samborski’s 28-year-old widow, Sarah, told The News before the funeral that the family is “totally devastated at the senseless loss.”
“There are no words to describe our pain and heartbreak. We are all just crushed, especially at the thought that Madeline won’t be able to live with her father,” she said, referring to the couple’s daughter, who turned a year old in November.
Ziemba said her son-in-law was a great man who was caring and loving, and a sports fanatic. He and his wife had been sweethearts at Brighton High School, and Sarah Samborski is now inconsolable.
Pictures of Samborski throughout his life were displayed at the front of the church. Around the corner was his open casket, where tearful mourners knelt or saluted. Just before the casket was closed for a final time, his young widow stroked Samborski’s cheek with a yellow rose, kissed him, then turned back to her family’s arms, sobbing.
Samborski was buried in his uniform with a photo of his daughter in a frame that read: Daddy’s Little Girl. The funeral was attended by about 1,100 people; another 500 were in the church basement.
“The world has lost a hero, but heaven has gained an angel,” read a card with a huge bouquet from the Oak Park Public Safety Department. “We will always love you.”
The Rev. Karl Pung said condolences always seem weak; that what we want to do is take away the pain and make it feel right again.
“We can’t make it right; we can’t make it better,” he said. Mourners must suffer not just the present loss, he said, but the thought of all the good he would have done in the future.
Pung recalled the time he asked Samborski how he liked being a police officer, and he’d responded: “I love it!” He was also happy to be a husband and father, Pung said.
“Have faith that one day we’ll see him again and enjoy his friendship,” Pung said.
After the funeral, mourners shivered in 20-degree temperature for an hour as the hundreds of officers filed into the cemetery for the brief ceremony, where Sarah Samborski accepted the flag, then held hands over it with her in-laws, Ken and Joan Samborski.
Following a 21-gun salute and the playing of Taps, a female voice was heard over a loudspeaker. “Calling Badge 1200!” she said, as Samborski’s family broke into tears.
“Badge 1200 is now out of service,” she continued. “He is now on eternal watch.”
Copyright 2009 Ann Arbor News
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