[Editor's Note: Officer Down Memorial Page reported that the deputy sheriff hit the back of a flatbed tow truck that had stopped on the shoulder of the highway.]
July 31--Milwaukee County Sheriff's Deputy Sergio Aleman was killed in a two-vehicle crash in the southbound lanes of I-43 near W. Winnebago St. just after 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, the sheriff's office said.
Aleman was taken to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa, where he was pronounced dead, the sheriff's office said during a 3 p.m. news conference at Froedtert.
The deputy was in a sheriff's pickup truck that provides service to disabled motorists, among other things.
The crash closed the southbound lanes of I-43 and one northbound lane of the interstate. The closure was expected to continue through rush hour into the evening as the crash is investigated by the Wisconsin State Patrol.
Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. was in California Tuesday for homeland security training. The department said Clarke was cutting that trip short to return to Milwaukee.
Clarke was going to be speaking with the deputy's family.
The deputy's death is the first in the line of duty since deputies Ralph Zylka, 48, and Sung Hui Bang, 31, were killed when the Sheriff's Department helicopter crashed Aug. 17, 2000, in a field in Dodge County.
Zylka and Bang, who was piloting the chopper, were returning from the Wisconsin Dells area, where they had been assisting in the search for a man wanted in the beating death of his girlfriend, a Chicago police officer. That suspect was apprehended in Juneau County after a 17-hour search.
Copyright 2012 - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
