Greensboro to dedicate bridge honoring fallen officer Dale Nix

The bridge on Sandy Ridge Road over Interstate 40 is becoming Greensboro’s newest public tribute to Sgt. Philip Dale Nix, placing his name on the span closest to the Sheetz gas station in Colfax where he was shot and killed while off duty on Dec. 30, 2023. Nix was 50 years old, had joined the Greensboro Police Department on Dec. 4, 2001, and the department lists him among its fallen officers.

City leaders approved the move with a resolution supporting the name Sgt. Philip Dale Nix bridge and sending the application to the North Carolina Department of Transportation. The choice of location matters because it ties a daily traffic route to the place Greensboro already associates with the officer’s last act of service, when he tried to intervene in a crime at a gas station along Sandy Ridge Road.

The bridge is only one layer of remembrance. Days after Nix’s death, the City’s Office of Community Safety invited residents to a gathering at Phil McDonald Plaza, 220 S. Greene St., at 5 p.m. on Jan. 3, 2024, in support of the Greensboro Police Department. Greensboro Police also includes Nix in a roll call of 12 fallen heroes recognized during Peace Officers’ Memorial Week, underscoring how his death was folded into the department’s larger history of sacrifice.

The response around Nix reached far beyond a single ceremony. The Tunnel to Towers Foundation said it would pay off the family’s mortgage, and the foundation later said the home had been paid off through its fallen first responder program. In court, Jamere Justice Foster later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and robbery with a dangerous weapon, and additional indictment developments followed in 2024. For Greensboro, the bridge is now a permanent marker for an officer whose loss still resonates across Guilford County and a community that has continued to turn grief into public memory.