SEATTLE – Eight days after he was killed by a speeding sport utility vehicle, rookie police officer Joselito Barber was laid to rest Monday, dressed in his uniform and his favorite Michael Jordan-model Nike sneakers.
“We are so saddened we didn’t benefit over the years from the energy, talent and devotion he would have brought to us,” Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske told the mourners.
Hundreds of law enforcement officers from around the state lined a brick plaza outside the University of Washington’s basketball arena as a motorcade bearing the casket arrived after a morning Mass. Two officers on foot led the hearse beneath the crossed ladders of fire trucks before pallbearers brought the casket inside.
Barber, 26, had been on the force just eight months when an SUV going an estimated 80 mph in a 30-mph zone broadsided his cruiser on Aug. 13, killing him. The driver, Mary Jane Rivas, has been charged with vehicular homicide and cocaine possession in King County Superior Court.
Barber’s fiance, Amber Noel-Du, and uncles, Ron and Ryan Barber, said he loved to have fun but was extremely serious about protecting others. When he was house-sitting for his father once, he removed the hidden spare key because he thought it was a security risk – forcing his father to break into his own home when he returned.
Noel-Du said that before she took a trip to Hawaii for a wedding, he questioned her for an hour about what she would do in a dangerous situation and suggested she only take tennis shoes in case she needed to run away from something. He called every phone number of locations where she planned to stay to make sure they weren’t outdated.
In that worry and seriousness, Noel-Du said she saw loving care.
“Lito always wanted to protect me,” she said. “He did, and I love him for that.”
Friends and relatives said that desire to protect led him to become a loss-prevention officer at Home Depot in Seattle, where he sometimes investigated the use of fraudulent checks and credit cards. Among the many uniforms at Monday’s memorial service were about two dozen orange Home Depot aprons.
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