Tears, tributes at memorial for state trooper
At a memorial Monday for Pennsylvania State Trooper David Kedra, relatives and fellow troopers recalled a young officer full of ambition and dedicated to his job.
At a memorial Monday for Pennsylvania State Trooper David Kedra, relatives and fellow troopers recalled a young officer full of ambition and dedicated to his job.
"Most people will go through their lives, decades after decades, and never find their purpose. Dave never had that problem," said Kevin Kedra, his older brother.
"He'd say, 'I can't believe they're paying me to do this job,' " said Trooper Peter Huyalew, who worked with Kedra at the Skippack barracks.
Kedra, a 26-year-old Temple graduate, was two years into his law enforcement career when he was killed Sept. 30 in a training exercise in Montgomery County. A trooper's gun accidentally discharged, shooting Kedra in the chest, state police have said.
An investigation is ongoing.
The memorial in Northeast Philadelphia drew hundreds of officers from the state police and neighboring agencies. They lined Chesterfield Road in front of Christ the King Church, saluting Kedra's casket under a clear autumn sky. At the family's request, the services were private.
Gail McClay, 78, sat on a rowhouse stoop for hours watching the procession, a tissue in hand to wipe away tears.
She didn't know Kedra, but as the mother of an officer, she said, she had to come to show support for the family.
"For the mother and father and [fiancee] and siblings, I don't know . . . " she trailed off. "There's nothing you can say. To say you're sorry just isn't enough."
In his eulogy, Commissioner Frank Noonan said the part of the state police pledge - I am a Pennsylvania State Police trooper, soldier of the law - "had seemed to haunt me lately" because of the search in the Poconos for Eric Frein, accused of killing one trooper and wounding another.
"It's our job to go out there and find him and bring him to justice. I've often thought, since I'm the one putting people out there, how dangerous it is and how do you find people that are going to do it?" Noonan said. "Well, I've got thousands of volunteers, and David was one of them."
Kevin Kedra said, At first "it was hard to imagine my younger brother as an authority figure. But from the first day he put on that uniform and that hat, it was impossible to see him as anything else."
Kedra's nephew wore that hat out of the church Monday, and saluted his uncle's casket as trumpeters played "Taps."
Trooper Jameson Keeler, Kedra's roommate at the state police academy, said the two "had promised to graduate together and never quit."
As difficult as the academy was, Keeler said, "I would run those hills every day to have him back again. Rest easy, Dave, I have watch from here."
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