An image in the rain at slain officer’s funeral captures emotions

There are no tears in the lawman’s eyes as he stands at attention in a downpour at a fallen police officer’s funeral.

The lawman, in full dress uniform, is a statue of resolve as rain streams from the low-tilted brim of his navy campaign hat.

But the image of him weeps.

The lawman, an honor guard from the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office, an unbowed sentry in a late-summer deluge, was graveside in a cemetery next to the Solid Rock Church of God.

The cemetery, on the eastern outskirts of Eastman, lies two miles from where the policeman, Officer Timothy Kevin Smith, was shot and killed in the line of duty five days earlier.

The photographs of the honor guard, Sgt. Randell Lattimore, include one with a raindrop dancing mid-splash from his hat, where a golden badge glistens in the gloom.

Since Thursday, the day Smith was buried, the pictures have struck a chord in the law enforcement community across the region.

The images require no captions.

The spray of rain droplets themselves, frozen in time on an August afternoon, are a gusher of symbolism — tears of unseen mourning.

Then there is Sgt. Lattimore himself — on watch, pensive, eyes locked dead ahead, his chin anchored over a tight collar.

His is the bearing of fortitude, an unflinching countenance that can’t help but speak to anyone who sees it: I’m here for you.

The pictures were taken by Telegraph photography chief Woody Marshall, who began working at the paper in 1997.

In a Friday email to Marshall, the sheriff of Lincoln County, Bruce C. Beggs, thanked the photographer for “portraying what all of the people in law enforcement do on a daily basis.”

Col. Kelvin Thompson, a Coweta County sheriff’s deputy, also messaged Marshall: “This truly symbolizes what we feel at the senseless loss of life for a fellow officer.”

Though the photographs had by Friday been shared more than 2,600 times on Marshall’s Facebook page, Sgt. Lattimore had not seen them.

“That’s something,” he told a reporter by phone after viewing them in a text message.

Sgt. Lattimore, who is 37, has a been a sheriff’s deputy since 2013. Before that he worked a few years as a corrections officer in the Fulton jail.

Joining the force’s 12-member honor guard and serving at funerals all over the state was, for him, something of a calling. The overriding mission: Letting loved ones of the fallen know that they are not alone.

It is somber, stiff-postured, steel-faced work.

“It’s a serious time,” he says. “I don’t think you can extend that comfort and that arm of love to families if you’re not serious about what you’re there for.”

Even as the rain washed over them Thursday at Officer Smith’s burial, members of the honor guard stood tall.

“No one on our team is thinking about how wet we are,” Sgt. Lattimore says. “Had it been snow, we’d have stood in the snow.”

To capture the two most powerful pictures of Sgt. Lattimore and his shoulder-to-shoulder comrades braced against the elements, Marshall, the photographer, snapped more than 50 frames of that single scene.

“Everybody was soaked,” Marshall says. “I was just doing the same thing I do at any assignment — trying to get the best picture I could.”

When Marshall trained his Nikon-D3’s 200-millimeter lens on Sgt. Lattimore, he knew he’d found the right angle.

The backlight was perfect.

The steady trickle spilling from the sergeant’s hat almost sparkles.

“I knew when I was shooting that the picture had a lot of potential,” Marshall says. “I think the people who are liking it so much are the same patriotic people who love America and love law and order.”

As kind words and comments about the pictures streamed into the newspaper office on Friday, Marshall picked up his camera.

A drop of rainwater dripped from its lens.

This story was originally published August 19, 2016 at 6:48 PM with the headline "An image in the rain at slain officer’s funeral captures emotions."