Fellow officers, family, friends mourn slain female Philadelphia police officer

Jet, Jan 29, 1996

Officials from across the state of Pennsylvania, family and friends of slain police officer Lauretha Vaird packed the Mount Airy Church of God in Christ in north Philadelphia to say good-bye.

Mourners overcome with grief consoled one another while paying their last respects to the officer who became Philadelphia's first female officer to be killed in the line of duty. Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell and police have called Vaird's murder "an assassination."

Vaird, 43, a single mother of two sons, received a fatal bullet at point blank range when she answered a silent alarm at PNC Bank's Feltonville Branch (See page 47).

Vaird was a teacher's aid before she joined the police force in 1986 at the age of 34.

Fellow officers remembered her as a role model.

"Laurie was like the mother of us all," fellow officer Myra Jones said in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She, like many other officers, benefited from Vaird's advice on matters from the proper filing of accident reports to how to live a good life.

During the service police clergy coordinator Rev. Maurice Hughes told how Vaird always offered words of encouragement and boosted other officers' morale.

He told Vaird's two sons, Stephen and Michael, that the best way to pay tribute to their mother was to "respect women the way we respected your mother," according to the Philadelphia Tribune.

Vaird was buried at Ivy Hill Cemetery in Mount Airy.