Children’s park to be named after fallen officer
Officer Daniel Webster was the kind of person who wanted to build an obstacle course in his backyard.
More than one person said Friday that if Webster had survived the shooting that ended his life last year, he’d soon be “48 going on 12.”
So it was fitting, they said, that a new children’s park in the heart of his old beat — near Wyoming and Copper NE — will bear his name forever.
“Dan was such a big kid,” Michelle Carlino-Webster, his widow, said Friday during a news conference.
She joined Mayor Richard Berry, City Councilor Pat Davis and neighborhood and law-enforcement leaders Friday morning to celebrate the start of construction on a $5 million park — the first phase of which should be done in December. It will be called the Officer Daniel Webster Albuquerque Children’s Park.
“When we have an officer that is lost in the line of duty — who gives their life for us and our community — there is no way ever that we can pay back that debt of gratitude,” Berry said, but “we do the best we can.”
The park is unusual because it will be built with an eye
toward making children in wheelchairs or on the autism spectrum feel comfortable. A ramp will allow wheelchairs to roll to the top of the play structure, and there are little cubbies built for children who want a safe, small space.
The park will have a xylophone-like wall that allows kids to play music, and tactile areas with interesting things to touch.
“Children in wheelchairs may, for the first time in their lives, be able to look down instead of up into the apparatus,” said Barbara Taylor, Albuquerque’s director of parks and recreation.
The first phase will cost about $1.2 million, with funding from the voter-approved bond program, including discretionary money set aside for the district of Davis and his predecessor, Rey Garduño. Funding for the remaining phases hasn’t been identified yet.
“It’s going to be a unique park for some very special kids,” Davis said Friday. “There will be nothing like this in the city of Albuquerque.”
The land for the park, behind the old armory on Wyoming, was donated to the city by the federal government.
Webster, 47, an Army veteran, was shot during a traffic stop in October as he tried to handcuff a suspect near Central and Eubank. He died about a week later in the hospital.
The day after the shooting, prosecutors filed a criminal complaint charging Davon Lymon, 34, with being a felon in possession of a firearm in connection. He is awaiting trial.
Federal prosecutors want to present evidence that Lymon asked police officers to tell Webster’s family he was sorry and hoped Webster recovered.