Coon said the officer was gunned down in the garage of his home during an apparent robbery attempt in which there was an exchange of gunfire. Neighbors called in reports of gunfire at 12:18 a.m.
Clark County Undersheriff Rod Jett said the police officer had just arrived home after his shift with the Bolden Area Command, near Martin Luther King Boulevard and Vegas Drive. Jett said the shooting appears to be a random act. The officer was not in uniform and did not have his patrol car with him. The officer's wife, mother, a 1-year-old son and 2-month-old daughter were at home at the time of the shooting, Jett said. Heartfelt condolences go out to the family, friends and co-workers of Officer Nettleton.
One follow-up story tells us that Officer Nettleton was a 2nd generation police officer. His father, Richard, is a retired Nevada State Trooper. When Trevor told his father of his plans to become a police officer, Richard tried to talk him out of it. When Trevor graduated from the police academy, his father pinned the badge on Trevor.
In another story, we learn that three suspects are in custody. At least two are gang members and one lived in the neighborhood. Kind of leads me to believe that maybe this was not a random robbery after all.
Police officers do a lot of things in their off-duty time to relieve the stress of police work. I know of guys that do carpenter work in their off-duty time. When I was with the Grand Island Police Department, several officers rode motorcycles. I’d have liked to have joined them on some rides, but at the time I didn’t have a motorcycle. Shortly after I started working in Beatrice, I bought a 1980 Kawasaki LTD 750. I rode around the southeast Nebraska area quite a bit and made several trips to Sunset Speedway in Omaha to watch the races. It wasn’t long before I realized I wanted to get a bigger motorcycle. I’d be going down the road and I’d meet Ultra Classics and Gold Wings and always thought to myself “I’ll have one of those one day.”
All told, I put about 10,000 miles on that Kawasaki while I had it. In August of 1992, I saw an ad for a farm sale north of Friend, Nebraska. They had a 1981 Gold Wing Interstate advertised on the auction with less than 19,000 miles on it. I went home with a new 11 year old Gold Wing that day. Before the riding season was over, I’d put almost 3,000 miles on it.
Right after I bought the Kawasaki, I joined the Grand Island Blue Knights Chapter. At the time, that was the only Blue Knights Chapter in Nebraska and we had 12 members. Today, Nebraska I has about 50 members and there are 4 chapters in Nebraska. Worldwide, the Blue Knights have over 20,000 members. I attended my first Midwest Regional Conference, at Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, in June 1993. At the time, that was my longest road trip on a motorcycle. It was also the first time I ever had to put on rain gear. As we were going to get on the Kansas turnpike at Wichita, there was a trooper sitting on the side of the road. He told John that there was a tornado warning for Wellington, which is about 20 miles south of Wichita. There was heavy rain, wind and hail. We pulled off the highway and went to a café a couple of blocks east and waited out the storm while drinking coffee and sampling the homemade pies. In a couple of hours, we heard the weather had cleared and took off in a very light rain. A few miles inside of Oklahoma, we stopped and put on the rain gear as the sky was getting darker. We were only back on the road for a few miles when we hit with a real gully washer. It rained so hard that we were going less than 25 miles an hour, and I had a hard time seeing the taillights on the motorcycle ahead of me. Luckily, it only lasted a few miles, and when we ran out of it, the skies almost immediately cleared. We stopped just before the Cimarron Turnpike and took the rain gear off. From there on, we had a beautiful ride.
Since then, I’ve had several different rain suits; some did a fair job and others didn’t help much at all. This particular weekend ended up being sunny and hot the rest of the trip. I made a lot of shorter trips, traveling about a total of 8,000 miles that summer, but didn’t end up using the rain gear for the rest of the season.
The 1993 MWRC Fall Conference that year was at Springfield, Missouri, but I ended up not going. Instead, Nebraska I decided to ride up to the Ft Randall dam just inside South Dakota. I asked Dad if he wanted to go, and he agreed. It had been quite a few years since he’d been on a motorcycle, but we would ride about 100 miles between stops and everything worked out great. At the last minute, the other guys who were going to make the ride backed out, but we had a good time.
I’d never been to that area so I took a camera and over the 2 days took a bunch of pictures. We took Hwy 281 north from Grand Island to Ft Randall. The next day we went back east to Yankton, South Dakota to Hwy 81 and came back south into Nebraska after a stop at Gavins Point Dam. It was well after dark when we got home. All in all, it was a great weekend of riding and sightseeing.
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