Six names added to state’s fallen officers memorial
The names of six Oklahoma law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty have been added to the state’s law enforcement memorial.
The names will be dedicated during the 49th Oklahoma Law Enforcement Memorial service at 10 a.m. Friday.
The public is encouraged to attend the service on the west grounds of the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety Headquarters, 3600 N Martin Luther King Ave.
The law officers added to the memorial this year are:
• Boss Huffman, 32, a special agent with the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad in Tulsa. He died the night of March 12, 1918, when his foot was caught in the railroad tracks as a switch engine was backing cars and ran over him.
• Charles E. Chitwood, 37, a special agent with the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad, died July 26, 1920, a few hours after being shot attempting to arrest a man he
caught burglarizing a boxcar in Tulsa.
• Samuel E. Adair, 47, a special agent with the St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad, died May 3, 1922, after he was apparently struck by part of a passing freight train, which caused him to stagger in front of a switch engine going the opposite direction.
• Trey B. Pritchard, 46, a lieutenant with the Sapulpa Police Department, was shot and killed Aug. 15, 2015, at a motel in Midwest City where he and his cousin, Jeffery Grafton, had gone to retrieve Grafton’s pickup. Grafton also was shot to death.
• Edward J. Wright, 33, a deputy with the Logan County Sheriff’s Office, died Oct. 23, 2016, after suffering a heart attack on duty in Guthrie on the night of Oct. 20.
• Nathan B. Graves, 45, an officer with the Sac and Fox Nation Police, died Jan. 24, 2017, in an on-duty traffic accident on State Highway 99, 11 miles north of Stroud.
For more information about these lawmen and the nearly 800 officers who have died in the line of duty in Oklahoma — before and since statehood — go online to the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Memorial website at www.oklemem.com.