500 at Service for Bazer Mourn a Lost Career

Deputy sheriff trainee Kelly Ann Bazer, who was gunned down by armed robbers Monday evening, was eulogized Friday as a “very special lady” who died at the beginning of her career in law enforcement.

In a funeral service at College Avenue Baptist Church, Sheriff John Duffy recalled a conversation with Bazer’s father, Thomas Hotchkiss, on the night that she died. Duffy told the 500 mourners that the grief-stricken Hotchkiss said: “Sheriff, I may have lost a daughter. But you lost an enthusiastic deputy.”

About 350 uniformed officers from 27 police agencies from as far away as Ventura County and Bazer’s 68 academy classmates attended the services. The body lay at the front of the church in a flag-draped casket, flanked by a four-man Sheriff’s Department honor guard and six pallbearers. The pallbearers included five deputies and a female member of Bazer’s class.

Duffy said that he had been looking forward to meeting the families of all the cadets on the day they graduated from the academy, including Hotchkiss.

“I wanted to see the proud, smiling face of her father. Instead, we met in one of the small (hospital) waiting rooms. After I had viewed her body . . . and learned how she was brutally murdered by armed robbers,” Duffy said.

Then Duffy promised that the killers would face “whatever justice the California Supreme Court has left with us.”

Three San Diego men, Ronnie Davis Williams, 20; Prentice Byrd, 19, and Jessie Lee Stuart, 19, are in custody and have been charged with one count of felony murder and three counts of robbery. Prosecutors said they may seek the death penalty for the defendants, who pleaded not guilty Thursday at their arraignment in Municipal Court.

According to investigators, Stuart and Williams robbed a Spring Valley supermarket Monday evening and shot Bazer, 28 and a mother of two, as they commandeered her car for a getaway. Byrd is believed to have driven the pickup truck that the assailants used for their getaway after abandoning Bazer’s car. Bazer died exactly one month after she was hired by the Sheriff’s Department.

At the time she was shot, Bazer was stopping by her sister-in-law’s house. Duffy said she had been making the visit every night after training at the academy.

The Rev. Dan Baumann, who officiated at the services, told the family and law enforcement officers that it was impossible to understand why Bazer died at the beginning of her career.

“What kind of a world is this? . . . What injustice? What kind of inhumanity from man to woman?” Baumann said. At the beginning of the service, Baumann said he felt “deep regret, sorrow and (a feeling of) senselessness of her death.” But he told the other members of Bazer’s class they should draw encouragement from her life.

“What a special lady Kelly was,” the minister said.

After the service, the flag that covered Bazer’s casket was presented to her mother, Gail Patterson, who lives in San Clemente. Bazer’s parents are divorced, and she was in the process of divorcing her husband, Mike Bazer, who lives with the couple’s two children in Elfrida, Ariz. Bazer and the children did not attend the funeral service.

Bazer’s academy classmates lined the entrance to the church on two sides after the service, and all of the officers saluted as her body was carried out and placed in a hearse. A Marine Corps bugler played taps, and a sheriff’s helicopter flew over the church in a final gesture of respect.

The pilot hovered over the cortege, sun gleaming on the aircraft, and slowly climbed in altitude until the drone of the engine faded away and it flew out of sight. As the hearse pulled away from the church, a grieving Thomas Hotchkiss blew his daughter a farewell kiss. A few feet away from Hotchkiss a group of women deputies consoled each other and wiped away tears.