Burnaby Mounties marked the 47th anniversary of a fallen comrade on Tuesday morning.
Officers from the local detachment gathered outside the Deer Lake branch to pay their respects to Const. Terry Tomfohr, a rookie RCMP officer who died while on duty 47 years ago on June 3, 1967.
Tomfohr was 19 years old when he graduated from the RCMP training depot in Saskatchewan. He was stationed in Burnaby and had been working there for only three weeks when he and his field trainer received a call one evening concerning some youths harassing a senior in Capitol Hill.
Tomfohr and his trainer joined several other attending officers in pursuit of the suspects on foot – and that’s when Tomfohr got separated from the other officers.
Burnaby RCMP initiated a search but officers didn’t locate Tomfohr until the next morning. Mounties determined the young officer had fallen off a cliff during the pursuit.
In 2002, a memorial was erected at the base of the flagstaff outside Burnaby RCMP’s Deer Lake office, and 10 years later, the memorial was upgraded to what can be seen mounted outside the office today.
