Funeral held for officer killed in Vegas shooting

HENDERSON, Nev. — An off-duty police officer who was among 58 people killed in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history was honoured with a posthumous promotion to Army first sergeant during an emotional funeral service Friday.

Hundreds of police officers in uniform packed the Henderson, Nev., church as pallbearers guided the casket of Charleston Hartfield, 34, which was draped in a U.S. flag.

Central Christian Church Pastor Mike Bodine told more than 2,000 people at the funeral that Hartfield, a Vegas police officer and U.S. Army Service member, had provided instructions ahead of time to be read at his memorial, which read in part: “If you’re reading this, then I’ve been called home.”

Along with a heartfelt message to his family, it also said people should not express sorrow about his passing but “enjoy themselves” and remember him for who he was.

“The truth only,” it said. “None of that stuff about how great I was.”

Friends, family members and police and military officials then spent more than an hour breaking his rule – including Brig. Gen. Zachary Doser, the head of the Nevada Army National Guard, who praised Hartfield, who served in Iraq, as the epitome of everything good about being an American, and posthumously promoted him to first sergeant.

Traffic paused for a moment on the Las Vegas Strip to mark the passing of the casket. Hartfield was receiving full departmental honours including a motorcade. He was a police officer who was among 58 people killed when a gunman opened fire from a high-rise hotel into a crowded outdoor concert.

The motorcade stopped traffic through downtown and along Las Vegas Boulevard, where people crowded pedestrian bridges beneath casino marquees as the blocks-long procession passed the site of the Oct. 1 massacre at an openair concert venue near the Mandalay Bay resort.

Some saluted and at least one man wept as a phalanx of more than 50 police motorcycles with lights flashing led a pickup truck bearing the flag-draped casket on a sunny and breezy day that had palm trees waving in the wind.

Hartfield was off duty when the shooting started at the Route 91 Harvest Festival concert, but department officials said he died trying to help others escape. He was an 11-year police veteran, a married father of a son and a daughter.