By ROB JOHNSON
Reprinted with Permission, The Commercial Appeal
Deputy Rupert Peete pulled onto the scene of his last service call Wednesday afternoon.
SHNS Photo by A.J. Wolfe/The Commercial Appeal
Shelby County deputies console each other after one of their officers was shot and killed after responding to a domestic disturbance call Wednesday afternoon
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Two Memphis firefighters had been reported shot at the corner of Bay Hollow Cove and Germantown Road, and Peete rushed to respond.
As Peete drove up, a passerby tried to warn the Shelby County sheriff's deputy that there was an armed man at the house.
But moments later that armed man turned his weapon, a shotgun, on Peete.
The blast struck the 45-year-old deputy before he'd had time to get out of his cruiser, and when they arrived, paramedics pronounced him dead on the scene, said Chief Deputy Don Wright.
"I never saw him when he wasn't smiling," Wright said of the deputy.
Peete started with the Sheriff's Department in 1981 as a deputy jailer but left in 1984 to join the Army.
He left the military as a major in 1997 and returned to the department as a patrol officer, Wright said.
"He was one of our better officers. Being retired military, if you told him to go down there and stand in that intersection for your eight hours today, he would say, `Yes, sir,' and he'd go stand in that intersection."
Peete's wife, Mary, is the third-ranking commander in the Shelby County Jail. Peete had three children, a boy, 15, and two girls, 8 and 3.
"He was a good family man," Wright said. "He had a nice home out in Germantown."
Wright, standing just feet from the scene Wednesday night, reached into his pocket and pulled out a small leather wallet. He flipped it open and looked at Peete's picture on his Sheriff's Department ID badge, the one he carried with him on the job.
Wright shook his head.
"It's just a good life cut short. This officer always had a positive attitude, always had a smile on his face. It's a great loss."
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