Sheriff Sid Gautreaux told mourners Saturday that one remains in critical condition and another faces a third operation on his shattered arm. The walls were lined with additional mourners, many of them police who had come from across the US.
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Garafola’s friends described him as a man committed to public service and devoted to his family.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said strength and courage seem to have defined Garafola’s life and death.
Jaye Cooper, Garafola’s brother-in-law to Garafola, said that he was like Fred Sanford, always picking up stuff off the side of the road, eventually fixing it up to give to anyone he knew.
“We ask for your continued prayers, for his healing and for his family”, Gautreaux said.
The line of mourners snaked through hallways in the 1,500-seat sanctuary at Istrouma Baptist Church, out the back door and into the parking lot.
U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, (R)-Louisiana and Rep. Garret Graves, (R), 6th Congressional District also both made brief remarks, thanking law enforcement officers and their families.
Michael Fendrick, a sheriff’s deputy from Dakota County, Minnesota, was among those officers who traveled to the service as part of an honor guard team. Bellevue Police Officer Paul Dill said their chief thinks it’s important to honor brother and sister officers.
Early arrivals for Garafola’s service included a deputy who worked with him in the department’s foreclosure division.
Garafola’s family, friends and colleagues remembered him as a fearless man who was killed as he tried to help another.
Garafola, 45, was laid to rest one day after hundreds turned out for a funeral service for Baton Rouge police Officer Matthew Gerald, 41.
Just three days before his death, Jackson – married with a four-month-old son named Mason – wrote a Facebook post detailing how hard it was for him to be both a black man and a police officer, describing himself as “tired physically and emotionally”.
Local deputies and police officers are reminded of the potential dangers in light of recent police shootings in Baton Rouge and Dallas. They were shot in an ambush by a lone gunman who was later killed.
But as the two men each separately registered for their re-election bids last week, they described conversations about how they could work together to respond to the shooting death of a black man by white police officers, the protests that death sparked and the ambush-style killings of three law enforcement officers only days later.
“My deputy went down fighting”, Gautreaux said. He said burying one of his own was his “worst fear” as a sheriff.
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He is survived by a wife and four children: daughters ages 7 and 15, and sons ages 12 and 21.
