Animals have played such key roles in so many facets of our daily lives. Throughout history, animals provided services and companionship, such as a guard dog, an indoor cat, a carrier pigeon, a service animal for the blind or a police horse. With so many animals and functions it’s not too surprising to notice a few animals in the stories of these fallen Detroit officers. However, the stories of some of these animals and the roles they played in the deaths of Detroit police officers, are intriguing if not absurd.
1)- We have lost too many police officers in the city while on duty, and we have lost too many animal officers as well. On July 14, 1966, a police horse named Little Reb was walking down Woodward with his policeman Officer Lester Lohmeier. Officer Little Reb had just won a spot on the bureau’s drill team within the previous two months. While patrolling the street, a bus hit Officer Little Reb and Officer Lohmeier throwing Officer Lohmeier and mortally wounded Officer Little Reb, who would die almost an hour later on site, while waiting for a vet to come.
On January 13, 2014, K9 Rookie Remi was in her crate in the back of the patrol vehicle when the driving officer hit a patch of ice and Remi’s crate was ejected, and broke open. Then, Remi was hit by another car that did not stop. Officer Remi was only 2 years old.
2)-This story makes one think about how much a turkey was worth back in 1917. Because Officer Henry Angelo was on patrol December 4, 1917 and noticed some men walking “suspiciously” down the street with a dressed turkey and went to question them. A policeman nearby heard a bunch of gunfire and ran over to find Officer Angell shot 4 times and two men running from the scene. He attempted to give chase with his revolver in hand, but lost them. He returned to Officer Angell finding him dead, and went to alarm the other police. Two brothers were arrested shortly after for the killing and brutal beating of Officer Angell due to a huge police man hunt. Now, were the men suspicious because of the turkey itself or because it was a dressed turkey? We shall never know.
3)-Cats have 9 lives. Sometimes one of their lives can also cost a human their only life. Such was the case when Officer Arthur Louis Pascolini, on July 2, 1929 responded to a call of a cat injured when hit by a car. Now having lived in the city over a quarter of a century, this alone hits one as odd. Especially odd after reading all the numerous ways officers were being killed during this time. How odd a call was made to help an injured cat, and an officer responded.
Anyway, on with the story. Seeing the cat was in misery and feeling obligated to relive the cat of that misery, Officer Pascolini pulled out his revolver to shoot the cat to death. The revolver discharged as he was removing it from his holster, shooting himself. His partner took him to the hospital immediately where he died from blood loss. No information on whether the cat survived or not was found, but one has to have a feeling the car accident was only the cats 4th or 5th life.
Detroit Police Fallen Hero stories 