‘Hope for healing’ at officer’s funeral
Angela Underwood Jacobs might have been a year older than her brother, David, but she often turned to him as if he were the older sibling.
“Angie, believe in yourself,” she recalled him telling her whenever she called him for advice after the death of their parents. “Work hard and ask for what you want, which is exactly what our mom and dad would have said. And now that he’s gone, who am I going to call now?”
Speaking near a blue casket Friday at Pinole Valley High School, Jacobs said she and others have struggled in their search for “logic in the illogical” following the shooting death of David Patrick Underwood, who was gunned down May 29 while standing watch at the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building in Oakland.
Underwood was killed in a spray of bullets that fatally wounded him and injured a colleague in what federal authorities called an act of domestic terrorism. A contract security officer of more than a decade for the Department of Homeland Security,
Underwood was 53.
Hundreds of people gathered at the service Friday to remember Underwood as a peacemaker who loved his friends, family, music, cooking, work and his three cars. The softspoken man excelled at sports — filling his parents’ home with trophies as a youth — but passed on an opportunity to play for the San Diego Padres when he was still a high school student.
Federal and local officials joined Underwood’s family and friends in honoring his life and service, filling the auditorium’s theater seats. Socialdistancing requirements — instituted due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic — were largely
ignored amid the grief, but most attendees wore face coverings and masks as they cheered and applauded Underwood’s life.
Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said Underwood was among the brave individuals who sacrificed everything. The agency will remember his name and service for future generations, he said, calling Underwood a “brother.”
“There is one thing that binds us together: That’s our desire to be part of something greater than ourselves by protecting our homeland,” Wolf said. “As large and as diverse as we are, it is that bond that creates a sense of family. Pat shared that desire.”
Wolf added, “Pat’s watch has come to an end, but his legacy has not.”
Underwood was killed as people protested police brutality blocks away when a man, identified by federal authorities as Steven Carrillo, shot at the federal building from a white van. Carrillo was charged this week with the killing and has also been charged in the fatal shooting of a Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputy, whom he allegedly killed in an ambush a week later.
An accomplice who allegedly drove the van in Underwood’s killing, Robert Alvin Justus Jr. of Millbrae, was charged this week with aiding and abetting Carrillo.
Underwood was the younger brother of Jacobs, a Republican candidate for Congress in Lancaster (Los Angeles County), and they grew up in Richmond and Pinole. Underwood graduated from Pinole High in 1985.
Pinole Police Chief Neil Gang read a proclamation from the mayor and City Council honoring Underwood, as well as a poem called “The Dash” about time
“Pat’s watch has come to an end, but his legacy has not.”
Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security
spent on Earth.
Upon reading the poem, Gang said there are two paths forward from the tragedy: focusing on the negative or focusing on finding hope.
“Hope for a better tomorrow. Hope for the healing of our country,” Gang said. “And hope for equality for all.”
Underwood believed everyone had a purpose, Jacobs said. He did not tell anyone how to live, but he loved living his life — always smiling, and pouring all his love into relatives and friends.
“A brother, a friend, a mentor, a leader, a good man has wrongly been taken from us,” she said.
Jacobs said she was angered by his death, but she would not remain angry.
“We cannot let anger or emotion drive our lives. We cannot let other’s hateful actions drive us to hate them back,” she said. “We must not be embittered by this horrific injustice. Hate, vengeance and violence solves nothing.”