President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect Ron DeSantis attended a memorial on Tuesday morning in West Palm Beach, Florida, for three Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office deputies who were killed in a crash nearly two weeks ago.
Deputy Sheriff Ignacio “Dan” Diaz, Deputy Sheriff Ralph “Butch” Waller, and Corporal Luis Paez were struck by a Jeep SUV on Nov. 21 while stopped with their motorcycles on the shoulder of Southern Boulevard, just west of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road near Wellington.
Waller and Paez were pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after the crash, while Diaz was in critical condition and underwent surgery at the hospital but later succumbed to his injuries.
“You can train the deputies to deal with bad guys, for traffic stops, high speed chases,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said at a press conference in front of the Fallen Officer’s Memorial Wall at PBSO. “There’s no training for this. They never saw it coming. They never had a chance to try and save themselves.”
More than 7,000 people were expected to attend Tuesday’s memorial, he said.
The public memorial was set to take place at the iTHINK Financial Amphitheater in West Palm Beach. The procession was scheduled to start at 9:30 a.m., followed by an 11 a.m. service, which was expected to end around 2 p.m.
Diaz, 51, joined PBSO in 2004 and had been with the agency’s motor unit for more than 10 years, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.
Paez, 58, worked for more than 36 years with PBSO, starting as a corrections deputy in 1988 before transitioning to road patrol and ultimately serving as a motor deputy for more than 20 years.
Waller, 54, worked in the motor unit for more than 18 years, beginning his law enforcement career with the Royal Palm Beach Police Department before it merged with PBSO in October 2008.
“It never gets easier,” Bradshaw said, discussing the nature of speaking to relatives of slain officers. “When you look in their eyes, you see that pain…and I never get used to it.”
