3 fallen officers remembered: 'Sometimes we don't honor them enough'

SALT LAKE CITY — Three Utah law enforcers, each from different races and backgrounds, were honored at the Utah Capitol on Thursday.

What ties them together is they were all brothers in the law enforcement community, each killed in the line of duty.

"We might be diverse in our beliefs, in our cultures, the way that we do things. But we all grieve. We all pray. These honorable people, sometimes we don't honor them enough," said Darrell Larose, a Native American who was there with other Native Americans to honor Bureau of Indian Affairs officer Josh Yazzie.

On Thursday, the plaques holding three names of officers killed in the line of duty last year were added to the Utah Fallen Officers' Memorial: Yazzie, who was killed in a rollover accident June 7, 2010, in Roosevelt; Sevier County Sheriff's Sgt. Franco Aguilar who was knocked off a bridge and plummeted to his death on April 29, 2010, while assisting a motorist who had crashed on an icy part of I-70; and Kane County sheriff's deputy Brian Harris, who was shot and killed Aug. 26, 2010, while chasing a suspected burglar.

Four officers were killed in the line of duty in Utah in 2010. Josie Greathouse Fox was shot and killed in January during a traffic stop. Her name was added to the wall during last year's ceremony.

One of the most heartfelt tributes to Yazzie and the other two men came at the end of the state's scheduled portion of the ceremony when a group of Native Americans sang in a drum circle in front of the memorial.

"In our way, we use the drum. We sing to the Creator," Larose explained to the crowd. "We ask the Creator to accept him into his world. We thank them for what they gave us, the ability to live. ... We ask the Creator to wrap his long arms around them, take them home again."

Before starting the drum circle, Larose concluded by saying, "People will know these men didn't die, but these men lived."

During the ceremony, attended by Gov. Gary Herbert and Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, Harris' wife, Shawna, delivered the keynote address.

She recalled how she heard a lot of traffic on the police scanners in her house the day her husband was killed, but didn't think much of it until a friend called her to say he heard an officer had been killed. A short time later, she saw deputies from the sheriff's office walking up her driveway.

"I knew it was Brian," she said.

She thanked the deputies who had the difficult task of breaking the news to her.