Slain Nye County officer remembered as soldier and family man

In a memorial service filled with emotional tributes to fallen Nye County Deputy Ian Michael Deutch, perhaps the most poignant moment belonged to a police dog named Chico.

Deutch spent about four years patrolling Pahrump with the 8-year-old Belgian Malinois, and during Saturday's service, Chico was retired from service and turned over to the slain deputy's family.

"Ian's daughter loves that dog," said Bill Becht, a captain with the Nye County Sheriff's Office. "She was constantly wanting to see Chico while all this was going on."

The 27-year-old deputy was shot and killed Monday in the parking lot of a Pahrump casino, his second day back at work after a yearlong deployment with the Nevada National Guard.

The staff sergeant with Nevada's 221st Cavalry Wildhorse Squadron survived nine months of combat in Afghanistan only to be killed 27 days after his safe return by a 30-year-old Pahrump man brandishing a rifle.

About 1,000 people attended Saturday's memorial service at Canyon Ridge Church in Las Vegas, where Deutch was remembered as a devoted deputy, soldier and family man.

He also was a loyal friend, said fellow Deputy Eric Murphy, the kind of friend who would draw large smiley faces on the dusty back window of your patrol car when you weren't looking.

Deutch's mother, Suzie, said Ian learned to shoot a gun while he was still in kindergarten and seemed to know what he wanted to do with his life at an early age.

"He wanted to be an Army guy, and he wanted to be a policeman. He got everything he wanted," she said. "He was my baby. I will always be proud of my baby."

Deutch's father, Richard, said his youngest son never had far to look for inspiration.

"His hero was his brother, Richard, and he wanted to be at his side," Deutch's father said. "He followed his hero into the National Guard as soon as he was able."

That decision paid off for him in a big way.

Deutch's National Guard unit was assigned to McCarran International Airport just after the 9/11 attacks, and that's where he met Vicky, the woman who would become his wife.

The church parking lot was dotted Saturday with emergency vehicles from every local agency and a few from as far away as Reno and Boise, Idaho.

Gov. Jim Gibbons was in the audience.

Before the service, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., greeted Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie at the front door of the church.

"How are you?" she asked.

"We can't catch any breaks lately," Gillespie replied.

They were surrounded by police and military uniforms of every color, from pale olive camouflage to dark greens and browns and blues.

The memorial was set to start at 9:30 a.m., but the crowd of about 1,000 mourners was kept waiting for a few minutes by the man of honor, who made his way from Pahrump to Las Vegas in a procession of police vehicles that stretched for more than a city block.

Deutch's flag-draped coffin was carried in the back of a pickup from the Nye County Sheriff's Office.

As the procession approached Canyon Ridge Church, it passed beneath a giant American flag held aloft above Jones Boulevard by ladder trucks from the Las Vegas and Clark County fire departments.

A formation of soldiers and an honor guard of police officers from across Southern Nevada met Deutch's casket and his family in front of the church, white-gloved hands to right temples.

The morning was windy, cool and bright. Flags snapped and people squinted.

Lt. Col. Scott Cunningham, Deutch's squadron leader in Afghanistan, said it's easy to be angry about the way Deutch was killed. Sacrifices like the one he made are always hard and rarely pretty, Cunningham said, but they are sometimes necessary to defend liberty and keep evil at bay.

Some people go through life wondering if they have done enough for their country and the people around them, he said. "This is nothing Sergeant Deutch would have ever had to worry about."

Sgt. Stan Harvey, an assistant chaplain with the Wildhorse Squadron, echoed that sentiment.

"This soldier's life was not taken from him," he said. "He didn't live as a victim, and he didn't die as a victim."

Harvey recalled a night in July at an observation post in the mountains of Afghanistan. The post began to take rocket fire, but Deutch was off watch and slept right through it.

Harvey said when he awakened the staff sergeant to tell him they were under attack, Deutch calmly asked if they were about to be overrun by the enemy.

"I said, 'No,' and he says, 'It'll be OK,' and he goes back to sleep," Harvey said, drawing a laugh from the crowd. "This guy was courageous."

Before "Taps" was played by a pair of buglers, riflemen on the roof of the church fired a 21-gun salute that caused audience members to jump and Chico to bark inside the auditorium.

A five-piece police band played "Amazing Grace" on bagpipes and drums, and a police dispatcher went on the radio to broadcast that "K9-3," Deutch's call sign, was at the "end of watch."

Nye County Sheriff Tony DeMeo said Deutch joined the department as a patrol deputy on April 12, 2004.

Six months later, he was transferred to the K-9 detail, an assignment most new officers must wait at least a year to get.

It was "confidence well-placed," DeMeo said, as the young deputy quickly took to his new post and partner.

DeMeo said he used to call the pair "Chico and the Man," though the reference to the 1970s sitcom was lost on Deutch, who was born in 1982.

"He said, 'What does that mean?' I told him to go look it up on the Internet," the sheriff said.

When the call came in Monday that an officer had been shot, DeMeo rushed to the scene and held Deutch's hand as paramedics worked on the wounded deputy.

DeMeo said just before Deutch was rushed away in an ambulance, he raised one arm and told the sheriff, "It'll be OK."

Earlier that same day, Eric Murphy said he went out to get in his patrol car and found something waiting for him there: a big smiley face etched in the dust on his back window.

"After a year in Afghanistan, he still remembered the little pranks that would make you smile," Murphy said. "That was Ian."

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.