Deputy recalled as ready to lend a helping hand
Fallen officer ‘was that person that went over and beyond’
John Coddou stopped to help people.
In August 2016, a man had perched himself on the edge of an entrance ramp on Texas 99, 100 feet above the ground. He was threatening to jump, but Coddou, a deputy who long patrolled western parts of Harris County, talked to the man for 30 minutes and, with the help of other deputies, managed to get him to back away from the edge.
Coddou’s role in saving the man received a small write-up in the Houston Chronicle. But one detail wasn’t included in the story.
“Johnny asked him, ‘Do you need a hug?’ ” his mother, Rose Harshfield, said Thursday. “And he went up and hugged him, and Johnny was telling him nothing’s this bad for you to lose your life.”
“He talked him off and gave him a hug,” Harshfield said. “That’s who he was.”
Coddou, 50, died Tuesday when he was hit by a truck in the median of the Grand Parkway in northwest Houston. He had stopped to help a driver who had been involved in another crash, when a pickup driving on the highway swerved around his parked vehicle and struck him.
Coddou was the first sheriff’s deputy to be killed in the line of duty since 2022.
Speaking about Coddou after the crash, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said it was in character for Coddou, a violent-crimes investigator, to have pulled over instead of leaving the job to a different person.
“It wasn’t surprising that he stopped to help,” Gonzalez said. “He saw community members in need.”
John Hampton Coddou III was
born and raised in Houston. After high school, he joined the Army, where he served as a military policeman at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.
In 2003, Coddou joined the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, first as a detention officer, then as a patrol deputy starting in 2005. He patrolled Harris County’s west side, including the Katy area, until he became an investigator in 2019.
As a deputy, Coddou was known as a caring person and mentor with a “gift for gab” and a talent for building relationships.
“He was that person that went over and beyond,” said Joey Abeid, a sheriff ’s deputy investigator who worked with Coddou in their patrol days.
He showed this again after a major storm that had taken down a power line at Barker-Cypress and Clay. The storm was backing up traffic for a mile, said sheriff’s Lt. Mike Nguyen, who patrolled the west side of the county with Coddou.
Coddou called Nguyen to come over and help drag the power line out of the way.
“I said ‘That’s crazy,’” Nguyen said. “But that’s the kind of guy he was. He wanted to make sure that if you were a victim, that you were taken care of, that you got the proper report filed to get your case resolved. If something was in a roadway, he wanted to make sure that things were cleared out. So you’re not just sitting there needlessly, so you can get to where you’re going.”
Coddou was known to sometimes patrol his area on a bicycle, his colleagues said. He earned the nickname “The General” from some of his friends, from the way he would call out orders on radio.
When he became an investigator in 2019, first in the robbery division and then in violent crimes, he was known to throw himself into his cases.
“He loved this type of work,” said Ryan Hilz, a fellow deputy investigator. “John liked to go and dig. The hunt for the person who did it, getting what he needed to find the people responsible for these types of foul offenses, he just ate it up.”
Outside of work, Coddou was an avid hunter and fisherman. He also enjoyed gardening, cooking and hosting his friends and family, his mother said.
Even in his hobbies, Coddou looked out for others, Hilz said. On their frequent hunting trips, Coddou was the early packer, having his gear ready a week before others had even started.
“He wanted to know everybody else that was going to be there, because he was packing stuff to make sure everybody else had stuff,” Hilz said. “He would come with already cooked meals. He planned out everything.”
When they reached their campsite, Coddou was also known for pulling out his hunting trip specialty: taco soup.
Coddou is survived by his wife, Kathleen, with whom he had just celebrated his 11th wedding anniversary. He is also survived by his mother and stepfather, Jim Harshfield; a sister, Michelle Coddou Kyzar, and her family; and a brother, Chris Harshfield.
He was preceded in death by his father, John Hampton Coddou Jr.
Coddou’s body was escorted Thursday morning from the Harris County Institute of Forensic Science to a funeral home in Katy. A three-minute-long parade of police vehicles crossed Houston, shutting down major roads as it went by.
Funeral arrangements had not been announced as of Thursday afternoon.