Thursday marks 10 years since Broward Sheriff's Office Sergeant Chris Reyka was killed in the line of duty.
"I can't believe it's been ten years. It doesn't feel like it's been three," said Sean Reyka, Reyka's son. "Each time we do one of these things, it feels like it's the first year for me."
"Even 10 years later, people feel like he’s still there and he’s still part of our group even though he’s gone," BSO Deputy Sheriff Brian Donnelly said.
9463 Foundation for Florida's Fallen Officers, named after Reyka's badge number, hosted a memorial ride Thursday night, which started at the Walgreens on Powerline Road in Pompano Beach, where Reyka had pulled someone over for a traffic stop and was then shot and killed on August 10, 2007.
"I actually held him until EMS got there," Donnelly said.
After an awards presentation, including the gifting of rifles engraved with fallen Florida officers' names to officers who don't currently have rifles, people rode to the South Florida National Cemetery in Lake Worth for a sunset service in Reyka's honor.
"Obviously with any tragedy that occurs and then with someone you know, and someone you admire, someone who is your boss, another police officer, in the zone you’re responsible for and this all happens to you at that time, overwhelming to say the least," Donnelly said.
People who didn't even know Reyka during his life attended the memorial.
“We all do the same job and we all face the same dangers and it could just as easily be me or one of my friends or family members," said David Marler, a police officer from Rhode Island.
Reyka's son now works for BSO. He said the community support for his father and his family ten years later is still strong.
"It makes me proud to be his son and it makes me proud to wear the same badge as everyone else here coming to work every day," he said.
Reyka was from Wellington.
The person detectives think may have killed him, Shawn Labeet, was shot in a shootout with police about a month after Reyka's death.
9463 Foundation for Florida's Fallen Officers coordinates motorcycle rides to departments in the state that have lost an officer in the last year.
"It’s a healing process for them that people that they have never met from the other side of the state show up one day and just want to have lunch with those family members who lost somebody," Donnelly said.
