LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A new memorial is honoring the life and legacy of two fallen Louisville Metro Police officers.
On Friday, two monuments were unveiled outside the Louisville Metro Police Department's Second Division offices, where both officers — Officer Peter Grignon and Detective Deidre Mengedoht — served and made the ultimate sacrifice.
In March of 2005, Grignon was responding to a hit-and-run call in south Louisville when a 17-year-old suspect shot and killed him. He was 27 years old when he died and had been an officer for two years.
"There was a knock at the door early in the morning, and I just thought he had forgotten his keys," Rebecca Grignon Reker, Grignon's widow, said.
But the knock at the door was her husband's commander.
"And they said, 'Peter has been hurt and you need to come to the hospital,'" Grignon Reker said.
She and Grignon were newlyweds and had big plans for the future when he was killed. While headed to the hospital, she asked the commander a very direct question that had a devastating answer.
"I said, 'I'm a police wife, I signed up for this. I need to know how bad it is so I can support him when I get there,'" she said. "And his commander said, 'He's been shot in the head and we think he's dead.'"
That day, Grignon died in the line of duty.
On Christmas Eve in 2018, Detective Deidre Mengedoht was conducting a traffic stop on Interstate 64 when a driver crashed into the back of her police cruiser. She died at the scene.
"It was heartbreaking," said Detective Justice Haydock, Mengedoht's friend and co-worker.
"Our sergeant, a lieutenant and myself, we actually went out and did face-to-face notifications to her family that day," Haydock said.
Now, 16 years after Grignon's death and three years after Mengedoht was killed, family, friends and fellow officers gathered outside LMPD's Second Division to honor the fallen officers, something Grignon Reker said "shows that Louisville values its police."
"Peter and Deidre both lived out their calling, and their calling was to serve the citizens of Louisville," said Lt. Chris Watkins, with LMPD's Fourth Division.
The Metro Police Foundation raised money to purchase the monuments and people across Kentuckiana contributed, eager to pay tribute to the fallen officers.
"They represent such great officers and the sacrifice that they made," said Haydock. "That they made down here in the Second Division."
While there's no way to repay the debt of their ultimate sacrifices, the memorials will always pay tribute.
"I just hope that this will let the families know that their sacrifice and that their memories will live on forever and ever," said Watkins.
The foundation is also adding a bench and a thin blue line in the concrete.
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