Greensboro police to host state memorial honoring fallen officers

Greensboro will put two of its own at the center of North Carolina’s annual remembrance of fallen law enforcement officers, as the state memorial ceremony comes to Lawndale Baptist Church with the names of Officer Michael Horan and Sgt. Philip Dale Nix still fresh on the roll of honor.

The 41st Annual North Carolina Peace Officers’ Memorial Ceremony is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday, April 14, at 3505 Lawndale Drive in Greensboro. The ceremony is being co-hosted by the North Carolina Department of Justice, the North Carolina Fraternal Order of Police, the Greensboro Police Department and North Carolina Concerns of Police Survivors, with Attorney General Jeff Jackson among the hosts expected to give remarks.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella Patterson will be the guest speaker. Her presence underscores how the ceremony reaches beyond one city or one agency, bringing together departments from across the state to remember officers killed in the line of duty and the families who carry that loss forward.

Assistant Chief Milford Harris said Greensboro police are honored to help host the ceremony and stand in solidarity with the families, friends and colleagues of fallen officers. That message carries added weight in Guilford County, where the memorial page maintained by the state Department of Justice lists Horan, whose end of watch was Dec. 23, 2024, and Nix, whose end of watch was Dec. 30, 2023.

The state justice department says its Special Prosecution and Law Enforcement Liaison section keeps an updated list of fallen officers and an Honor Roll submission process for agencies reporting line-of-duty deaths. This year’s list also includes officers from Forsyth County, the North Carolina Highway Patrol, WakeMed Campus Police and Public Safety, Cherokee County, Macon County, Madison County, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, Harnett County and Raleigh Police, among others.

The memorial is part of a broader tradition tied to Peace Officers’ Memorial Day and National Police Week each May. That observance dates to 1962, when President John F. Kennedy proclaimed May 15 as Peace Officers Memorial Day, giving the ceremony a national place in the calendar of remembrance for officers killed or disabled in the line of duty.