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| 'You never, ever forget' — officers honored 30 years after rampage |
| By orlandosentinel.com - Desiree Stennett |
| Published: 01/13/2014 |
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By the time the gunfire inside the Orange County Courthouse was finally silenced on Jan. 10, 1984, Bailiff William "Arnie" Wilkerson was dead and Bailiff Harry Dalton and Corrections Officer Mark Parker were critically injured. Parker's younger sister, Colleen, was only 16 at the time. But because of her upbringing — with an Orange County Sheriff's Office lieutenant for a father and social worker for a mother — she learned at a young age the risk law-enforcement officers face each day. "I knew the bad stuff," Colleen Parker said Friday after a remembrance ceremony for her brother, Mark Parker, Dalton, and Wilkerson on the 30th anniversary of the shooting. "You don't want it to happen to your family but you had to know that it was a possibility. And I did." Colleen Parker still remembers when her father's best friend brought her to meet her family at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Her brother, only 19 at the time, had a bullet lodged in his spine and although he was still alive, his family knew he was in bad shape. "That was the scariest thing I had ever seen, pulling up to ORMC at the trauma unit," Colleen said as she described the scene crawling with police, deputies and media that she watched through the patrol-car window. Mark Parker, who lived the longest, was confined to a wheelchair until his death in 2009. Wilkerson died at the scene and Dalton died in 1991 from complications related to serious brain injuries he suffered in the shooting. They are among 43 officers whose names are engraved on a memorial in front of the Orange County Courthouse. All died from injuries they suffered in the line of duty. Read More. |
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