Obituaries
Video: Fallen Officer Remembered at Napa Valley College
Jermaine Gibson, the Napa police academy graduate who died in the line of duty last week, was also a decorated Marine.
Members of the North Bay law enforcement community, uniformed Marines, college trustees and staff gathered at Wednesday morning to honor fallen police officer , a 2000 graduate of the college’s police academy.
Gibson, 29, was serving on the Cathedral City police force in southern California when he was killed late Friday night in a crash during a high-speed pursuit of a stolen car.
Damien Sandoval, director of the Criminal Justice Training Center at Napa Valley College, said Gibson was the college’s first police academy graduate to die in the line of duty.
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Sandoval said Gibson “was remembered as very vivacious, engaging, fun.”
After finishing the police academy, Sandoval continued, Gibson enlisted in the Marines and served two tours of duty in Iraq, earning two Purple Hearts on separate occasions.
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Sandoval called Gibson “a man of quality, a man of conviction, a real servant to the public.”
The college is sending Gibson’s family an American flag that had flown over the Criminal Justice Training Center for 18 months, and Sandoval said there are plans to create a memorial wall at the college with Gibson’s name the first to appear.
For more from Wednesday’s ceremony, see the video.
