Hundreds attend vigil for slain Sacramento officer Tara O’Sullivan
SACRAMENTO — A group of female police officers marched into the grassy outdoor theater at Sacramento State, abruptly stopped and turned toward the stage.
“If seeing hundreds of female police officers doesn’t touch you, you don’t have a heart,” said the school’s president, Robert Nelsen.
This emotional scene set the mood for Sunday night’s candlelight vigil to honor Sacramento Police Officer Tara O’Sullivan, killed in the line of duty Wednesday night.
Nearly 300 people — including O’Sullivan’s parents, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn, uniformed officers from throughout the capital region, Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and members of the Sacramento City Council — gathered outside the university library to remember the 26-year-old and share stories about her.
“Thank you to her parents for loaning her to me for four years,” Nelsen began. “Thank you for raising a hero.”
O’Sullivan was responding to a domestic violence call with another officer Wednesday afternoon when she was attacked by a gunman with a rifle, The Bee previously reported. She died that night after being transported to a hospital, and the gunman continued to hold off officers for hours.
At the vigil, lifelong friends, police academy classmates, a professor and coworkers from a restaurant at Sac State where she had worked all tearfully spoke about O’Sullivan’s strength and character.
Sierra Cody said she had been friends with O’Sullivan for over 20 years.
“We all hope to be a sliver of the amazing, beautiful person she was,” she said while fighting back tears.
O’Sullivan graduated from Sacramento State in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in child development, one of the first four students to complete the newly created Law Enforcement Candidate Scholars program. She went on to Sacramento’s police academy and started her service after graduation on Dec. 20, 2018.
Vigil attendees, who ranged from officers in uniform to parents with their children, held lighted candles as Nelsen promised O’Sullivan would never be forgotten. They waved black and white American flags with a blue stripe, often referred to as the police’s flag, in the air during the hour-long event.
Jessica Reed, another one of O’Sullivan’s lifelong friends, said hearing from all of O’Sullivan’s more recently made college friends was a testament to the person she was.
“It doesn’t take much to know who she truly is,” Reed told the crowd.