The two lines for viewing were nearly out the door. Hundreds of mourners walked into City of Praise Family Ministries in Prince George’s County on Friday to pay their respects to Terry Bennett, a D.C. police officer who died in the line of duty earlier this month.
As they made their way inside, people stopped to watch the pictures and videos looping on a set of screens: Bennett on the football field at Ballou High School, on the force as a young cadet, on his wedding day in a white suit, at Disney World with his son.
During the funeral for the D.C. native and eight-year veteran of the police department, city leaders, family members and colleagues remembered Bennett as a positive force who poured his time and energy back into the community where he grew up.
Janyia Freeman, Bennett’s niece, read a letter to her uncle, recalling memories of him taking her to school, attending guitar recitals and being there for her “first pitch at the ballpark.”
A sophomore at Clark Atlanta University, Freeman said her uncle showed her “that you can go to college, earn you degree, and still come back and serve your community, making an impact on the people who raised you.”
“Losing you has taught me to not take any moments for granted because one day those moments will be all you be left with,” she read.
Bennett was on duty the evening of Dec. 23 when he got out of his vehicle to help a stranded motorist whose car had broken down on the highway. A car traveling at a high speed hit Bennett, who was taken to the hospital and died of his injuries on Jan. 7.
Two days later, police arrested the driver they say fatally struck Bennett. Jerrold Coates, 47, of Northwest Washington, is charged with second-degree murder. Police said medics found Coates unconscious at the scene and administered naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses. A judge ordered him held in jail awaiting a preliminary hearing scheduled for Feb. 2.
Bennett is the 12th D.C. police officer to die in the line of duty since 2004, according to D.C. police records. The last was Wayne David, 51, who was killed in August 2024 by a gun that went off as he attempted to retrieve it from a storm drain.
“He embodied what it meant to be a police officer,” interim police chief Jeffery Carroll said during the service Friday. “He acted simply because someone needed help. That is what the heart of policing is. That is the why behind the badge.”
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser called Bennett a “son of Washington” who dedicated his life to bettering the city.
“He knew what I say often, that a government can’t do it all,” Bowser said. “That we, each one of us, can do something for the next generation.”
Officers who worked with Bennett in the First District remembered the smile he always wore during roll call and how he enjoyed listening to the rapper Rod Wave.
“I used to wonder how somebody who played so much could have such a serious job,” said one officer. “But that was his gift. He reminded us that even on the hardest days, not to lose ourselves in the weight of this work.”
Bennett was a graduate of Ballou High School, where he played football and basketball, ran track and earned a scholarship to Bucknell University. He later returned to the school, first as an assistant dean, then as a football coach.
More than a hundred people gathered Jan. 12 on the Ballou football field to commemorate Bennett in a candlelight vigil. A cluster of candles in the school colors, blue and gold, surrounded two jerseys labeled #2 — the number Bennett wore as a player.
On Friday, the school’s head football coach, Kenny Brown, presented Bennett’s retired jersey to his wife and 3-year-old son.
Brown said the students adored Bennett. He said that Bennett proved to the players that a kid from Southeast Washington could attend a prestigious private college, and he once gave the coat off his back to a student in need. Bennett ended every huddle by reminding the teens to keep out of trouble, and his mantra was, “Stay out the way.”
“Coach Terry to them was a mentor, he was a father figure, he was a hero,” Brown said. “Coach Terry Bennett is a hero. That’s what he was to this community and that’s what he was to the guys.”
Ward 8 Council member Trayon White Sr., who said he had known Bennett since childhood, announced that the D.C. Council had agreed on a proclamation to declare July 21 — Bennett’s birthday — as Terry Bennett Day.
Then, it was time for a special video tribute. A young woman appeared on-screen in a hospital bed.
“At the time of his departure, Officer Bennett didn’t receive a second chance, but he made sure that others would,” said Maya J. Benson. “And because of that plan, I was given a second of life.”
Bennett was an organ donor. She said she was suffering from end-stage kidney failure, when Bennett’s widow, Nadia, connected with her transplant team to offer her Bennett’s kidney.
The room erupted in cheers.
After the pastor spoke, Bennett’s casket, draped with an American flag, was loaded into a hearse and driven to Maryland National Memorial Cemetery. He received a full police procession, a fleet of motorcycles flanking the hearse as it drove past the First District police station where Bennett had worked and across the Maryland border — carrying for him the final time through the city streets he had walked as child, then grown up to protect.
The post Fallen D.C. officer hailed as mentor, father figure, hero during funeral appeared first on Washington Post.
