PORT ANGELES — When a friend is suddenly taken, and the loss is a hard punch to the chest, it might seem easier to dive into work. Anything to get your mind off of what happened.
So when U.S. Forest Service Officer Kristine Fairbanks was killed a week ago Saturday, the law enforcement officers who knew her well could have done just that: buried their grief in busyness.
Instead they chose to keep a vigil beside the body of the friend they knew as Kris.
Fairbanks, a Forest Service K-9 officer, died Sept. 20 from a gunshot to the head at the Dungeness Forks Campground near Blyn.
Authorities believe Shawn Roe — an Everett man who had been convicted of felony unlawful imprisonment as well as of domestic violence — fired the gun, and later killed retiree Richard Ziegler in his yard off Jonrey Road near the campground.
Roe was shot to death by two Clallam County sheriff’s deputies in the parking lot of the Longhouse Market & Deli in Blyn later that night.
In the days since the shootings, many officers who knew Fairbanks have chosen to join the vigil, and to face the emotions that have descended in the wake of the tragedy.
