Officer Joseph Paul Sanders, California Highway Patrol, California

Officer Joseph Paul Sanders

California Highway Patrol, California

End of Watch Monday, December 15, 2008

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Joseph Paul Sanders

Officer Joseph Sanders was struck and killed by the driver of a vehicle while he was directing traffic at the scene of a previous accident on the Pomona Freeway in Hacienda Heights.

The vehicle that struck him had collided with another car on the rain-slicked highway at approximately 4:20 am. Officer Sanders was flown to a nearby hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

The suspect pled guilty to involuntary vehicular manslaughter in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Officer Sanders was a United States Marine Corps veteran and had served with the California Highway Patrol for 14 months. He was survived by his expectant wife and three sons. His daughter was born on June 3rd, 2009.

Bio

Age 29
Tour 1 year, 2 months
Badge 18781
Military Veteran

Incident Details

Cause Struck by vehicle

directing traffic, vehicle crash

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Seventeen years later...
The growth in the life you left behind is incredible!
You might not recognize it, but it would bring you so much joy!
The small branches and buds on the tree of your life and legacy have grown, strengthened each in their own way by your life and death. They are each strong boughs in their own rights now and thrive in their individuality. It is a sight to behold!
The world has been filled with love and laughter because of the lives you brought into it.
Humble, quiet pride would show on your face in its sneaky way. The image of that face brings happiness, yet it simultaneously haunts.
The tears of sadness are replaced mainly by happy tears, born of the good things. The days of aching sobs have disappeared.
The sadness has waned, softened, and become a quieter voice.
But when the time comes to mark each year since your departure, the decrepit skeletal hand of grief can still reach out its lanky fingers and grasp the heart.
It renders the body exhausted.
It renders the mind fogged.
It pierces the heart to bleed again.
It weighs the soul like an anchor, dragging it to the infinite blackness of the deepest depths of the sea.
It calls up a broken, deep aching loneliness for your presence in its corporeal form. A loneliness that begs even for just a minute of you.
It incites the old tears of loss to return.
When it resurfaces, it is accepted with as much grace as possible.
Then, thankfully, it passes, leaving a new layer of strength behind like a broken bone healing.
The world is beautiful for having had you in it.
Your love is indelible.
Forgetting you is an impossibility.