A nearly 50-year-old tradition ran through the Santa Clarita Valley on Saturday to honor law enforcement officers who “sacrificed their lives in the performance of their duties,” according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Starting with a ceremony Friday, the Memorial Torch Relay Run involved deputies from the department’s various bureaus and stations running 57 legs of different distances from the Hall of Justice building in downtown Los Angeles, starting with the Special Enforcement Bureau.
The run, which began in 1975, started its local leg at a memorial for Deputy Jake Kuredjian at his eponymous park in Stevenson Ranch. The event covered a total of over 300 miles.
It ended at the Altadena Sheriff’s Station around noon Sunday, according to the Sheriff’s Information Bureau.
The memorial torch involves nearly 2,000 runners and passed all the mainland sheriff’s stations over the course of three days, according to a news release from SIB.
SCV Sheriff’s Station officials posted video Sunday of their Saturday night relay to the Lancaster Sheriff’s Station.
Deputy Kabrina Borbon of the SCV Station said deputies participate “to honor all of the fallen officers throughout the nation.”
This year, Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer, a Stevenson Ranch resident and Palmdale Sheriff’s Station training officer who was murdered on duty in September, and Manhattan Beach Police Department Officer Chad Swanson, a motorcycle officer who died in an Interstate 405 crash in October, were specific honorees, according to an LASD release.
Kuredjian, who also lived in the SCV, was a 17-year veteran who responded to a 2001 call for backup from the U.S Marshals Service in Stevenson Ranch, where officers were serving a search warrant against a suspect in a federal weapons case.
The suspect, James Beck, began opening fire and Kuredjian was struck and killed.
The suspect died after a shootout with officers, and his body was found in his home after he set it on fire.
Kuredjian also was recently the subject of successful legislation to have a stretch of Interstate 5 between the Pico-Lyons Overcrossing and the McBean Parkway Overcrossing in Santa Clarita named after him.
Assembly Concurrent Resolution 92, authored by Assemblywoman Pilar Schiavo, D-Chatsworth, was chaptered into law April 30, according to LegInfo.gov.
