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Officer describes saying goodbye to brother in blue

It’s the toughest thing Dallas police Sgt. James Bristo has ever had to do as a cop.

He was at the hospital last Thursday when he and another officer were called into a room. Fallen police officer, Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens, lay on a hospital bed.

DALLAS — It’s the toughest thing Dallas police Sgt. James Bristo has ever had to do as a cop.

He was at the hospital last Thursday when he and another officer were called into a room. Fallen police officer, Sr. Cpl. Lorne Ahrens, lay on a hospital bed.

Ahrens was a big man, and the medical examiner’s office needed help.

Bristo grabbed what he initially thought was a blue blanket. He realized it wasn’t a blanket at all. It was the body bag. The zipper was in his hand.

Sgt. James Bristo's words about the day and aftermath of a deadly ambush that killed five fellow officers.

“Having to zip a brother in a bag, that’s another one they did not train us for,” he said, choking back tears. “After 27 years of police work, that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Bristo wrote about it in a Facebook post the day after the ambush-style attacks in downtown Dallas. He needed a way the express the grief and the anger he felt.

“You know we throw the words brother and sister frivolously as police officers,” he wrote in that post. “But I will tell you that after last night, after holding the body of my warrior brother, I understand our family.”

Ahrens was the kind of cop other officers trusted, he says. You wanted him protecting your back. He was cool and calm under pressure.

“If Lorne said, ‘I need cover,’ everybody went,” he said.

He met Ahrens in the early 2000s when Ahrens was just a rookie officer. It was there that Ahrens met his future wife, Katrina, also a Dallas police officer.

Sgt. James Bristo said Brent Thompson lost his life when he ran to help a fatally wounded Lorne Ahrens. 

Ahrens was a father of two.

“Lorne gladly did this job knowing that he could forfeit his life at any minute,” he says.

It was just before the end of the protest rally Thursday when former Army reservist Micah Johnson launched that devastating ambush-style attack. Ahrens, three other Dallas officers, and a DART police officer would ultimately die.

“We all watched as officers escorted a group of people who did not like them down city streets to protest their right to protest the very officers providing the security to do so,” he wrote in the post. “We then watched officers lead those same people who hated them away from danger.”

Bristo spoke to the officer who drove Ahrens to Baylor Hospital.

“He told me that his group was pinned down and that when Lorne was hit and they were trying to do their best to get them in the cruiser to get him out of the area, the DART officer came up," he said. "And when he came up to help, he drew the sniper’s fire. He gave his life trying to save Lorne.”

The car was riddled with bullets by the time it reached the hospital. One of the tires was down to the rims.

Shatemia Taylor, the lone civilian shot during the attack, described a “tall, hefty, bald white” officer who yelled at her as the gunfire erupted.

“I remember seeing him,” she said. “As he was going down, he says, ‘He has a gun. Run.”

Bristo is convinced it had to be Ahrens.

“He was trying to protect her,” he said. "He’s not worried about himself at that point. He never would. That’s just the way he was.”’

Bristo was at home last Thursday with his wife when he saw the attacks unfold on live TV.

“She looked at me and she said, do you need go and I said, ‘Yeah, I do,’” he said.

As a police officer’s wife, Marcy Bristo understood he had to go. She knows he has another family.

“I didn't want him to go back in but I knew he had to do that for his peace of mind, and for his brothers and sisters, he had to go back in,” she said.

First, he went to southeast patrol where he works as a sergeant. Calls were stacked up. He spent the next hours making sure that those who had called 911 for help got the help they so desperately needed.

“I was telling friends the other day we grieve differently than other people do,” Bristo said. "We didn’t shut down the store to be able to grieve and move on. We didn’t get to stop working. Most everybody shed a tear for a few minutes, took a deep breath and went right back to work.”

Then he made his way to Baylor Hospital. He went to the 17th floor, where other officers had gathered to grieve their fallen comrades.

He and other officers decided to go see Ahrens.

He and three other officers stood around his hospital bed. The machines were still beeping. They prayed for their fallen comrade. Then they began telling jokes and stories about what kind of character Ahrens had been.

Friends affectionately called Ahrens, “Meat.”

“There was a lot of Lorne,” he chuckles. “He was a huge guy. Just to look at him was intimidating because he was so big and so strong. But once you got to know him and you got past the tough guy stuff. He was a marshmallow.”

He was standing in a hallway with other officers and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick when he and the other officer were called to do that unimaginable task of moving Ahrens’ body.

He says he knows Ahrens would have done the same for him.

“It’s family,” he said. “What would you do for your real brother or sister?”

It's not just a job. It's a calling and that's the way it was for Ahrens.

That's who he was. It’s that way for Bristo, too.

“I’m honored to call each of you brother and sister,” Bristo wrote in that post. “What an honor it is to do the job that we do.”

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