McLachlan said in 2024<\/a>, 50 years after Pierlet\u2019s death.<\/p>\nLast September, McLachlan and others close to Pierlet, including his sister Nancy and brother Luke, attended the annual RCMP National Memorial Service at Depot Division in Regina to pay their respects at a get-together nobody really expected nor anticipated so many years later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had not spoken with them since Roger\u2019s death,\u201d McLachlan said in an email this week. \u201cTo connect with them by phone and messages was wonderful, but to actually meet them in Regina at the memorial was very special.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew my life would change after I lost Roger, but I did not realize how much I lost,\u201d added McLachlan, now living in Ontario. \u201cIt was attending the memorial service in Regina, and learning and feeling part of a much larger family and support, that was very emotional for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
On March 29, 1974, Pierlet was working a shift before taking a few days off to visit his parents, flying in from Montreal.<\/p>\n
That fateful Friday, John Miller and Vincent Cockriell were drunk and hunting for a cop to shoot as they drove through Cloverdale. Cockriell, 18, had a rifle and wanted revenge, blaming police for the death of his brother, killed during a high-speed chase.<\/p>\n
The pair threw a beer bottle through the police station window. Pierlet went to investigate, stood at the open door of a 1964 Dodge and was shot dead by Cockriell.<\/p>\n
The criminals sped east on the freeway near Aldergrove where RCMP officers Eric LaFoy and Drewe Nelson, responding to a call for help on police radio, boxed in the getaway vehicle, then ditched. Both were arrested and put behind bars for years to come.<\/p>\n
LaFoy, now retired and living near Edmonton, still gets emotional when talking about that deadly day.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been 52 years but you don\u2019t forget it,\u201d he said in a phone call this week.<\/p>\n
Last fall LaFoy and Nelson also attended the RCMP National Memorial Service where they met McLachlan and Pierlet\u2019s siblings for the first time.<\/p>\n
Stories were shared, new friendships forged, siblings reunited after decades apart.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of this would have happened without you (the Now-Leader) publishing that article on the 50th anniversary (of Pierlet\u2019s death) two years ago,\u201d said LaFoy, who used the internet to connect with McLachlan and others who knew Pierlet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reunion (in Regina last year) was outstanding and we were treated so well. We got along so well, too, even the people who\u2019d never met before. We\u2019ve all stayed in touch and I\u2019m sure we will forever now. None of this would have happened without the story you wrote.\u201d<\/p>\n
Passionate about it all, LaFoy wrote about the 2025 memorial for a quarterly RCMP magazine with details about the special reunion of Pierlet\u2019s loved ones, all of whom plan to return to Regina for the 2026 service this September.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis story, although unique in itself, still brings home the value and importance of honouring all our fallen members who have sacrificed their lives trying to serve and protect our fellow Canadians,\u201d LaFoy wrote in the magazine. \u201cNot forgetting the value in also paying tribute to the families of these fallen members, who on occasion get left behind. We will remember them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Cloverdale, in Pierlet\u2019s memory, the 176 Street overpass just south of Highway 10 is named after the fallen police officer, who was killed nearby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Death of Surrey Mountie leads to family reunion, new friends 52 years later Published 4:37 pm Saturday, March…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-567777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}