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Fallen Las Vegas police officer honored at park groundbreaking

Updated December 18, 2018 - 8:01 pm

Nearly four and a half years after her husband died in the line of duty, Nicole Beck helped break ground Tuesday afternoon on a northwest Las Vegas park that will bear his name.

Las Vegas officials and the family of Alyn Beck broke ground on the 10-acre park that will be named after the Metropolitan Police Department officer, who was shot and killed along with his fellow officer on June 8, 2014.

Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo were ambushed by anti-government extremists Jerad and Amanda Miller while eating at a CiCis pizza on Nellis Boulevard.

Alyn Beck’s widow and his father, Ronnie Beck, participated in the ceremony with Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, Metro Capt. Sasha Larkin, Las Vegas Ward 6 Councilwoman Michele Fiore; and representatives from the park’s developer and general contractor.

“We can never repay the service of officer Beck, but we can create a peaceful place where he can be remembered,” Goodman told the crowd at Tuesday afternoon’s ceremony.

The Officer Alyn Beck Memorial Park, at 9220 Brent Lane near Kyle Canyon Road and U.S. Highway 95, will feature two LED-lit sports fields, a shaded playground, water-play features, a basketball court, shade trees with benches, a handicapped-accessible ramp and landscaping.

Nicole Beck thanked city officials Tuesday for their work building the park. She said she heard talk of building a park on the vacant lot in the area since she moved to the city while pregnant with her now-teenage daughter.

“There are so many community members here that I know, and I love, and loved Alyn,” she told the crowd before joking about the park’s delayed construction. “And I think they’re so excited that the park will be named after somebody they loved, but also that the park will finally be built.”

The city voted to name the park in honor of Alyn Beck in June 2015.

After resolving permit issues, construction of the park is ready to go, and it should be completed in about a year, Fiore said.

“It’s going to be a jewel in this community, just as officer Beck was,” Fiore told the crowd.

Fiore said that when she was elected in July 2017, she made it her “number one priority” to build the park. She told the crowd that she had a new idea to improve the park by erecting a bronze statue of the two fallen officers.

The city also plans to build a park for Soldo in the northern valley “as we develop up there,” Fiore said.

Lombardo told those gathered that it’s important to remember when someone makes “the ultimate sacrifice and loses their life in the call of duty.”

“I make that promise to you Nicole, that we will always remember,” Lombardo said.

As Nicole Beck spoke to the audience, her voice cracked, and she said she promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She said that if her husband were here, he would have “cracked a joke about it.”

“I think he would have said ‘I’m just a normal guy, I just was doing my job; don’t make a fuss about me,’” she said after the ceremony. “But he did deserve it.”

Beck said as her children grow up, she hopes they will visit the park and remember their father.

“I hope they get a sense of meaning of what their dad meant to the community,” she said. “That they will know that he will really never be forgotten.”

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Follow @k_newberg on Twitter.

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