Both were killed in the line of duty Saturday night<\/a>.<\/p>\n“It just kind of hits you at times, you see something that reminds you of the time we shared with our chiefs. We’re just sticking together and getting through it,” says Lieutenant Ryan Tyson of Walnuttown Fire and Rescue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Authorities say 26-year-old Alexander Rivera was driving under the influence when he veered and crashed into both Chief Buck and Assistant Chief Shick on Route 222 near Fleetwood. Police say Rivera and the woman he was with left the scene before they arrived.<\/p>\n
“I hope the two, including the woman that fled with him, I hope they get proper justice, and I hope the families get proper justice because to me, again, cowards, to me, run away,” says Gina Bryk, Fleetwood.<\/p>\n
Rivera has been charged with driving under the influence, involuntary manslaughter, and other related charges.<\/p>\n
But despite the charges, the death of both chiefs is a loss that many members of the community are feeling.<\/p>\n
“It’s sad, it’s sad, we send our prayers and our love out to the families,” says Bryk.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s horrible, like they go out and put their lives on the line and they just went to work thinking it’s another day and doing good things for the community, and then they didn’t get to come home,” says Whitney Ford-Welborn of Fleetwood.<\/p>\n
To give firefighters time to grieve, Walnuttown Fire and Rescue decided to put themselves out of service until April 11th.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A move that was only possible because fire companies, even in counties away, decided to send crews out to cover the Walnuttown area until then.<\/p>\n
“We know the fire department is a close-knit community, it’s a brotherhood, and we want to give them that time to work through it and process it in a healthy way, and so if we can continue to protect the people of Richmond Twp. and surrounding communities, that’s the least we can do,” says Lieutenant Daniel Braden of Manheim Township Fire and Rescue<\/p>\n
Flags will stay at half-staff until both Chief Buck and Assistant Chief Shick are laid to rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two fire chiefs were killed in a crash over the weekend, the tragedy hitting home in the small…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-159084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}