Ten years ago today, on July 17, 2016, a gunman ambushed law enforcement officers responding to a call near the B-Quik convenience store on Airline Highway in Baton Rouge, opening fire on six officers within seconds of their arrival. Three were killed at the scene: East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Deputy Brad Garafola, and Baton Rouge Police officers Montrell Jackson and Matthew Gerald. Three others were wounded. One of them, Cpl. Nick Tullier, never fully recovered and died in May 2022, bringing the toll to four.
For Livingston Parish, the loss was, and remains, close to home. All four officers who died were Livingston Parish residents at the time of the ambush. Tullier, who was struck in the head, was a Denham Springs native and a 1994 graduate of Denham Springs High. In the days after the shooting, then-Parish President Layton Ricks spoke of the fallen as neighbors, saying the violence had struck "right here, to our home."
The gunman, 29-year-old Gavin Long, a former Marine from Kansas City, Missouri, was killed at the scene by a police tactical team. The attack came less than two weeks after the police killing of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, and ten days after a separate ambush killed five officers in Dallas, a stretch of violence that left the region and the nation on edge.
The day is remembered as the deadliest in East Baton Rouge law enforcement history. This year, agencies across the region marked the anniversary with a series of events. A reflective walk stepped off at 8 a.m. from Baton Rouge Police headquarters and proceeded to the B-Quik site on Airline Highway, with the public invited to join along the route. A 90-mile memorial ride began at the Slidell Police Memorial. Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sid Edwards ordered flags at city-parish facilities lowered to half-staff Friday, from sunrise to sunset, in memory of the four men.
