BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The names of two slain Cincinnati police officers were added to a state memorial in London, Ohio, on Wednesday at the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy near Columbus.
Linda Pope, widow of Cincinnati Officer Daniel Pope, was among those who watched as Attorney General Betty Montgomery and the Ohio Peace Officer Training Council honored men who died in the line of duty.
Officer Pope was killed along with his partner, Spc. Ronald Jeter, as they tried to make an arrest in Clifton Heights in December.
The ceremony featured bagpipes and color guards, a flyover and a missing man formation by a police helicopter unit, as well as a riderless horse and a flag display for each of the 110 Ohio officers killed in the line of duty since the academy was established in 1976. Last year across the country, 159 police officers, sheriffs' deputies and state troopers were killed in the line of duty. Wednesday's ceremony honored the six from Ohio.
In addition to Spc. Jeter and Officer Pope, they are:
Ohio State University Officer Michael Blankenship, 43, who was shot and killed in February 1997 while responding to a theft complaint on campus.
William Ricketts Sr., 55, who had been chief of the New Middletown Police Department for six months when he died in a car accident while taking papers to the courthouse.
Ashtabula Officer William Glover Jr., 30, who was shot and killed in November pursuing a robbery suspect.
Lyndhurst, Ohio, Police Sgt. Michael Muzychenko, 47, who suffered a heart attack in November while handcuffing a suspected drunken driver.
