Indianapolis salutes goodbye to fallen police hero IMPD Officer Bre Leath
In a site where race fans gather every Month of May to salute champions, the city crowned a new hero, IMPD Officer Breann Leath who was slain while investigating a domestic dispute on Indianapolis’ eastside last week.
The coronavirus pandemic and social distancing orders necessitated a police funeral like one never seen in Indianapolis, as hundreds of police officers lined the famed two-and-a-half mile oval with their lights illuminated, saluting as the hearse bearing Officer Leath’s body slowly rolled past following an intimate funeral attended by family, IMPD leadership and clergy in a Pagoda suite overlooking the front straightway of the track.
Governor Eric Holcomb recalled Officer Leath’s career Indianapolis News as a corrections officer at the Indiana Women’s Prison where a children’s nursery will be renamed in her honor.
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett said, “While a global pandemic may keep us physically separated today, the sun rose this morning on a city that has come together as one united in admiration for our fallen hero.
“Here at this track and across the city her brothers and sisters in blue stand ready to keep watch over her legacy.”
Mourners recalled stories of Officer Leath buying dinner for an elderly crime victim on her district and connecting with other east siders on her beat.
“She wrote a blank check to this community to the people that she didn’t even know, she sacrificed her own life so that others may live and that’s what makes Brea special,” said East District Lt. Michael Leeper. “That’s what makes police officers special.”
IMPD Chief Randal Taylor said, “kindness, compassion, and Press Release Distribution Service In Indianapolis generosity are the things that we as peace officers know can make a difference in the lives we touch for they are the qualities in an extraordinary person. Officer Breann Leath forever in our hearts will be remembered as extraordinary.”
IMPD Commander Richard Riddle was Officer Leath’s mentor at the IMPD Academy and later her East District commander and read a passage from a biography Brea, as her family called her, wrote when she first entered the academy and recalled her father’s pride as he served in the Marion County Sheriff’s reserve division.
“’Eagerly I get dressed and run outside to see him sitting in his police car with the door open. As my sisters and I approach his police car, he turns the lights and sirens on. From that moment on I knew I wanted to be a police officer,’” Riddle read from the biography.
“I can assure we lost one of our best in Breann Leath.”
Bre’s sister Tiana recalled sisterly misadventures the pair participated in.
“I just love you so much broozy baby,” she said, her voice breaking, “and I’m gonna make you proud most definitely.”
Dr. Chris Holland, chaplain to Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #86, likened the duty of police officers to those who stand up to evil despite personal peril.
“Just like many nights when you stood with your hands crossed or at a police line, you’ve stood with your hands crossed every day on that thin blue line, you’ve stood with your hands crossed in a stance that they teach you at the academy that says, ‘We don’t bow, we don’t break, we stand strong.’”
Commander Riddle announced that Officer Leath’s call sign, Baker 231, will be retired, and assured his fallen officer, “We’ll take it from here.”
Officer Leath is survived by a 3-year-old son named Zayn.
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