Honoring a fallen trooper
MOORE — No flowers, no photos, no roadside reminders.
The empty stretch of Moore highway bears no trace of the July 14 accident that claimed the life of an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper.
On Tuesday, the tragic significance of the site along Interstate 35 resonated as a police motorcade snaked past escorting the body of Lt. D. Heath Meyer to a Norman funeral home.
It was the same road where Meyer had been struck by a fellow trooper’s vehicle 10 days before while placing stop sticks in hopes of stopping a pursuit.
On Tuesday, blue and red lights flashing, nearly a hundred state trooper cars and motorcycles zoomed past the deadly site.
In a dangerous line of work that demands bravery and sacrifice, Meyer’s death was the 36th Oklahoma Highway Patrol life taken while serving.
“His life stands as a testament to the OHP’s passionate commitment to protecting Oklahomans,” wrote Ricky Adams, chief of the patrol.
All that remains of the tragedy is intangible — a family’s grief, a community mourning one of its own and the pain of those involved in the accident.
Meyer died late Monday night.
For Meyer and the other two patrol officers involved, that Friday night began like any other. Meyer was sitting in the Troop A headquarters listening to the radio with his troop commander
and another lieutenant when they heard a chase begin.
Trooper Rodney Rideaux had pulled overDangelo Ladon Burgess, 28, who was out on bail on charges in Oklahoma County District Court of aggravated attempting to elude a police officer, driving under the influence, transporting an open container and driving without a license. Last year, Burgess was involved in another car chase that Meyer worked.
This time, Rideaux stopped Burgess in the southbound lanes of I-35 just north of the Indian Hills off-ramp. Burgess then hopped back into his car and sped off, the patrol reported.
Trooper Clint Painter joined the pursuit near Shields Boulevard.
To assist, Meyer also responded. He pulled over near N 27 on I-35 where he laid stop sticks in the lane.
Rideaux and Painter, meanwhile, pursued Burgess on the highway at speeds exceeding 110 mph.
While trying to avoid the stop sticks, the pursuing troopers’ vehicles slammed into each other. One subsequently struck Meyer as he stood on the roadside.
“This incident happened, literally, in four-tenths of a second. No time for anyone to react,” Adams said in a news release after the accident.
Meyer was taken to the hospital in critical condition. The fleet of patrol cars escorted his body to the Primrose funeral home in Norman.
Burgess was taken into custody on July 14 and now faces complaints of attempting to elude a police officer resulting in great bodily injury, causing a collision resulting in great bodily injury while unlicensed, failure to stop at a roadblock, following too closely, failure to wear a seat belt, operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license, possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia and failure to carry insurance.
Adams said the patrol will release details on funeral services as soon as they are finalized.