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Watauga commissioners ask community to honor fallen officers Fox and Ward

Sgt. Chris Ward and K-9 Deputy Logan Fox. Image courtesy of the Watauga County Sheriff's Office.

Watauga County commissioners have set aside a day to honor two slain deputies and the law enforcement officers who protect the lives of others. At a board meeting last week commissioners approved a resolution setting April as a month of remembrance for the county's fallen law enforcement officers.

The measure also requests that flags be flown at half-staff on April 28. That's the one-year anniversary of the deaths of Deputy Logan Fox and Sergeant Chris Ward.

The men were shot and killed by a man suspected of killing two other people, the suspect's stepfather and mother, George and Michelle Ligon. Authorities say the man then killed himself. The deaths of Fox and Ward shocked the Boone community, and hundreds of people attended a joint funeral service for the officers.

The resolution encourages people to observe a one-minute moment of silence at noon on April 28 and asks citizens, businesses and government offices in Watauga to illuminate a blue light.

A blue light has come to be a symbol that honors officers who have fallen in the line of duty.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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