Two Slain Officers Are Honored : Police: Names of the LAPD’s Zlatko Nikola Sintic and Christy Brondell Hamilton are solemnly set in granite outside of San Fernando Valley station.

More than 100 police officers stood silently in their dress blues Monday as Los Angeles Police Chief Willie L. Williams led a solemn dedication ceremony for a memorial honoring two officers slain in the line of duty in the San Fernando Valley.

“Today we honor our heroes,” Williams said as he stood beneath an overcast sky outside the Devonshire Division station in Northridge. “They’re a source of pride because they made a difference that will never be forgotten.”

Officer Zlatko Nikola Sintic, 33, was killed Feb. 12, 1976, in a gun battle outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Granada Hills, shot dead by a ski-masked robber who then killed himself.

Officer Christy Brondell Hamilton, 45, was slain Feb. 24, 1994, as she responded to a domestic dispute in which a troubled teen-ager gunned down his father and Hamilton before killing himself. Hamilton, who had graduated from the Police Academy just days before, was the second female Los Angeles police officer to die while on duty.

David Miller, pastor of the Church at Rocky Peak in Chatsworth, spoke Monday of the importance of keeping the officers’ memories alive.

“This memorial has been established so that these two lives . . . will never be out of our minds,” said Miller, who serves on the division’s community police advisory board. “We as a community will always be grateful for those who risk their lives.”

Moments later, with somber music filling the air, officers filed past a granite memorial placed outside the station’s front doors and bearing the names of their two colleagues. Some officers broke into tears.

Sintic posthumously received the department’s Medal of Valor for an incident in which he killed an armed robber. Hamilton received the Tina Kerbrat Award, in recognition of her attitude and perseverance during her stint at the Police Academy. Kerbrat was the other LAPD female officer slain in the line of duty.

Hamilton’s death remains a vivid and painful memory for many officers at the Devonshire Division station, where she was based. “The night we lost (Hamilton),” said LAPD Capt. Bruce Crosley, who commands patrol officers at Devonshire Division, “some of you lost a mother, a daughter, a sister and a friend.”

Hamilton’s father, Kenneth Brondell, a retired 30-year veteran of the LAPD, recalled Monday the pride he felt the day his daughter graduated from the Police Academy and the few days she worked as a patrol officer.

“I’m proud of her doing her duty the best that she could, even though it was cut very short,” Brondell said.

“It was bittersweet,” added Hamilton’s mother, Margie Hoffberg, of the ceremony. “But it’s comforting to know that her name is going to live on. We miss her.”