One of the Dallas officers killed by a sniper on Thursday was once with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and grew up in Southern California.
Dallas Police Department Senior Cpl. Lorne Ahrens left the Sheriff’s Department in 2002 and began service in Dallas two days later, according to a Friday afternoon Facebook post from the Southern California agency.
“Lorne was a big guy with an even bigger heart,” said sheriff’s Capt. Merrill Ladenheim.
Ahrens served in the Lennox and Lancaster stations, working with the Sheriff’s Department from 1991 to 2002. He was a law enforcement technician when he left for Dallas.
“His colleagues today at the LASD are describing him as the type of person who always had a smile on his face and greeted you with kind regard,” the department said on Facebook.
Ahrens had a 10-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son with his wife, who is a police detective, the Washington Post reported.
He grew up near L.A. and still has family in Simi Valley, according to the newspaper, which spoke to his father-in-law.
Ahrens underwent surgery and was out when his wife arrived at the hospital, but something went wrong, the father-in-law said.
Ahrens was a great co-worker, sheriff’s Sgt. Anthony Gunn told CNN. Gunn was deputy when Ahrens was technician.
“I had the honor of working with Lorne at LASD’s Lennox Station in the early 1990s and at Lancaster Station in the late 1990’s,” Gunn said.
“He was the kind of guy that it made you happy when you got to work and saw he would be working the shift with you. You could count on him to do the right thing, the right way,” Gunn said. “He was a dedicated professional. He was well-grounded, seeing the world the way it really, is but not letting the evil in the world discourage him from doing good.”
