Friends, family, colleagues grieve dead policeman

STRUTHERS — “He was a plus in my life,” said a colleague.

The words were spoken today in the parking lot of St. Nicholas Church on Fifth Street as a procession of marked and unmarked police cars filed in behind a silver-gray hearse carrying the body of Youngstown Police Department Detective Sgt. Robert Deichman. The procession had wended its way from Schiavone Funeral Home on Belmont Avenue in Youngstown.

The 40-year-old accident investigator died in a fiery predawn crash on Salt Springs Road last Thursday, just minutes from his apartment on Tyrell Avenue. He was off duty at the time and returning home from celebrating a fellow officer’s birthday when his unmarked cruiser slammed into the side of a semi tractor-trailer pulling out of a driveway.

“He was a very kind man, never walked by anyone without saying hello,” Patrolman Bill Ward said, clenching his white YPD honor guard gloves in his hands. “I feel bad for the younger ones who won’t get to know him. He was a plus in my life.”

For more on this story see Wednesday’s Vindicator or Vindy. com.