Son mourns former Overland Park officer shot in North Carolina. ‘I hope to be just like him’
As funeral preparations continue for a former Overland Park police officer who was killed in the line of duty in North Carolina, his son shared a touching tribute Thursday.
The grieving 12-year-old wrote a poem.
William “Alden” Elliott, 46, was fatally shot Monday in Charlotte, N.C., while trying to serve an arrest warrant. Terry Clark Hughes Jr., 39, used a high-powered rifle to shoot Elliott and other officers from inside his house, killing four and injuring four more.
Hughes was killed in an ensuing shootout, where at least 12 police officers fired their weapons. He had a long criminal history and had been wanted for possession of a firearm by an ex-felon and for fleeing officers in another county, the Charlotte Observer reported.
“My daddy is a hero,” Theo James Elliott, 12, wrote in the obituary poem shared online Thursday. “He died getting the bad guys, that’s what he was good at.”
Elliott worked for the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections at the time of his death. He began there in 2010, moving to the Special Operations and Intelligence Unit in 2016.
The Overland Park Police Department, where Elliott began working in 2008, was his first job in law enforcement. Elliott was previously a Marine.
William Elliott was a strong marksman who loved Star Wars and baseball, especially the Los Angeles Dodgers. The father and son bonded over Pokémon cards and old video games, the son wrote.
William Elliott had planned to teach his son how to ride dirt bikes, Theo Elliott said.
“For my 12th birthday he bought me a dirt bike. “He bought himself one too, so that we could ride together. I will learn how to ride it and we will ride together one day, Daddy.”
William Elliott is also survived by his wife. A funeral procession down North Carolina Highway 16 took place Thursday afternoon, transporting Elliott’s body from the county medical examiner’s office in Charlotte to a funeral home in Newton, NC.
“He was the best man I will ever know,” Theo Elliott wrote. “And I hope to be just like him.”
Monday’s shooting was the deadliest attack against U.S. law enforcement officers against since 2016, according to The Associated Press. WIlliam Elliott’s colleague Sam Poloche, as well as Charlotte-Mecklenberg police officer Joshua Eyer and Deputy U.S. marshal Thomas Weeks, were killed on the scene.
A memorial service for William Elliott will be held May 9 at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, NC.
This story was originally published May 2, 2024 at 10:11 PM.
