By Errol Castens
Daily Journal
OXFORD – Lafayette County-Oxford-University CrimeStoppers leaders are spearheading an effort to establish a public safety memorial in downtown Oxford – ideally, the lawn of the Lafayette County Courthouse.
Three law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty within Lafayette County – University of Mississippi Police Officer Robert Langley and Deputy U.S. Marshals Hugh Montgomery and John Montgomery – will be included. Langley died in 2008 after being dragged down West Jackson Avenue by a drug-impaired driver while the two Montgomerys (no relation) were killed in 1901 in an attempt to arrest a moonshining suspect.
Those pushing the memorial initiative are asking the public’s help to determine whether others should be on the memorial.
“We’re going to put Langley and the marshals on it, and we’re looking to see if there are any other public safety personnel that have been lost,” said CrimeStoppers co-chair David McElreath. “We’re not trying to compete with the military memorial, but we’re looking to see if there’s anyone out there – a deputy sheriff, a town marshal, a firefighter – who died in the line of duty and should be memorialized.
“My father was sheriff and died in office, but he died of lung cancer,” McElreath said. “We’re out to honor those who died in the line of duty. I hope what we don’t do is to get a memorial made and then find out someone else should have been included.”
Organizers of the effort hope to have the memorial – a granite or marble structure embedded with badges authentic to the officers it commemorates – in place by summer 2016.
Donations for the project can be made at any FNB Oxford branch care of James Woodington.
“The greater hope is that another name never has to be added to it,” McElreath said.
errol.castens@journalinc.com
Twitter: @oxfordcitizenec