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David Lee Lilly ('63)

Beckley Fallen Heroes Fund: David Lilly

This article appeared in the Register-Herald on May 26, 2007.

By MICHELLE JAMES

Beckley Police Sgt. David Lee Lilly, 30, was living out his dreams, according to his daughter, Tammy Lilly-Levy.

“All he wanted to do was be a police officer and take care of his family,” she said.

Those dreams, however, were cut short on the night of May 12, 1975, as the husband and father of one pulled over a suspicious vehicle at the intersection of South Fayette Street and U.S. 19.

The driver of the vehicle, Ronald Williams, had robbed a Charleston coin store earlier in the day, and as Lilly stood outside the window of the stolen car, Williams shot him twice and fled the scene in the officer’s patrol car.

Williams, who was arrested 12 days later in Wayne, N.J., was convicted of first-degree murder, but broke out of prison just three years later, killing a West Virginia state trooper and an elderly man in Arizona before he was apprehended in New York City in 1981.

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Lilly, a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School who served in Vietnam with the U.S. Air Force, was a member of First Assembly of God and the Fraternal Order of Police.

According to Tammy, aside from his family, which also included his wife, Cathy, and police work, Lilly had a passion for motorcycles.

Former Beckley Police Chief Thomas Durrett, in a May 1976 story in the Beckley Post Herald, described Lilly, who served as the department’s training officer, as “the type of guy that saw something good in everybody.”

“He was always willing to give up his time to better his own training because he would be willing to pass it on to other men.”

Retired detective Cedric Robertson, who was a police cadet in May 1975, was trained by Lilly and said he was privileged to be the recipient of some of the knowledge, both personal and professional, Lilly dispersed.

“He basically took me under his wing and taught me not only about police work, but how to be a good person and how to treat people,” Robertson said of Lilly, his former partner with whom he had ridden as recently as the night before his death. “I was just blessed to be able to work alongside him and see how he did things. He always had an answer for everything.

“Dave will always be in my heart, both him and his family.”

Tammy says she is constantly thinking of her father as well.

“He was a great daddy,” she said. “I’ll never forget him. I’m proud to be his daughter.

“I still go to bed at night knowing my father died protecting me, and I think that’s pretty special.”