UPDATE: Nicholasville police mourn the loss of officer killed in crash

NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. (WTVQ) – “We have an officer posted with him 24 hours a day until after the funeral. He’s not alone and the family knows that we’re still protecting Burke because he can’t protect himself right now,” Nicholasville Police Sgt. Scott Harvey says.

A family of blue in is shock Wednesday. One of their own, gone in a tragic crash.

“Every officer today had that moment where ‘I drive to training too,’” Harvey says. “I drive these roads too. It could have been any one of us.”

Wednesday morning’s crash on U.S. 27 claimed the life of Nicholasville police officer Burke Rhoads, an eight year veteran of the department.

“We suffered a great loss today,” Harvey says.

Now as a department, they are starting the process of finding a new normal. The officers were grieving and sharing stories with each other. Some of those stories even bringing smiles to their faces.

Harvey recalls one night, “His headlight went out on his cruiser and he came up [to the station], took a headlight off a pool car and switched his headlight out so he could go back to work. The sergeant told him, ‘look you could have driven the night shift [and turned the car] in the next day for the garage to fix it. It didn’t have to be done this way.’”

With the chuckle, Harvey remembers Rhoads response, “He looked at the sergeant and said, ‘It’s against the law to drive with one headlight.’”

As the department uses this time to grieve and recover, neighboring counties have offered to lend officers and units to answer calls for service and be on patrol.

“It’s our job now as an agency to come alongside [Rhoad’s] family and give them whatever they need,” Harvey says.

“Burke was the same guy at work as he was as a husband and at home,” Harvey says. “We can all take a lesson in that and learn to be the same person everywhere we are and people will remember us fondly. That is what he taught us today.”