Missing and Murdered Security Officer Cases Go Unsolved
EXCLUSIVE
News Staff
Private Officer International
Charlotte NC July 19 2019
Throughout the country, dozens of missing or murdered security officer cases sit in cold case files, unsolved, and some believe, that have been forgotten.
Larry Reiner went missing from a Florida construction site in 1979 while working the overnight shift as a security guard.
His car was left behind, along with a pack of cigarettes on a desk inside a trailer used by security guards during their work hours. His whereabouts remain a mystery still today.
In Chesterfield Virginia, a security officer nearing the end of his shift at an apartment complex was found beat to death in the early morning hours of July 9th, 2009.
Damion West was 28 years old when he was murdered while working as a security officer at the Ivy Walk Apartment complex.
A person leaving for work called 911 stating that a security car looked like it had run off the road into a tree. Police found the bludgeoned body of West 100 feet from his vehicle near a retention pond fence
The case is still unsolved but recently the Chesterfield police announced that they have a suspect and that they were looking for him. But at this time, no arrests have been made.
Fifteen years have passed since Curtis Pishon went missing from his job at Venture Corporation in Seabrook.
He was 41 and a former Concord police officer with multiple sclerosis on July 5, 2000 when something bad happened, and he vanished in the middle of the night.
Police say information gathered over time has helped them piece together what happened, including the identity of the person they believe murdered Pishon, but a lack of witness testimony has kept the case from closing.
Police knew Pishon was working at Venture Corp. when his car caught on fire in the parking lot. They knew that he alerted Seabrook Fire Department just after 2 a.m., who quickly extinguished the fire. The cause of the fire, which destroyed the car, was a mystery at the time.
Seabrook firefighters are the last known people to see Pishon. In the days following his disappearance, police came up with no results after searching Venture, then-police chief Paul Cronin told the Hampton Union in 2000.
Research showed the week Pishon was murdered was unique, Gallagher said. Normally, there were 100 employees working 24 hours a day inside the facility, but that week was a “shutdown week,” he said. Many people were on vacation, and just 12 workers were inside the building that night.
Police now believe some of the workers that night were breaking into a vending machine when Pishon came upon them. They also believe the fire was set as a diversion.
“Some sort of struggle ensued. Mr. Pishon was killed,” Gallagher said. “I don’t believe they set out to murder Mr. Pishon, but I believe that was the result.
No body has been recovered and no arrests have been made.
Two security officers sitting in their vehicle at a Capitol Heights, Maryland apartment complex on July 17, 2015 were protecting the residents from danger.
But on that night, they quickly became the victims of violence as they were ambushed in a drive-by shooting.
26-year-old Adrian Kinard, the father of a 1-year-old daughter had hoped to become a police officer when he and a partner were shot. Kinard died, but his partner survived.
Police recovered the gunman’s car soon after the shooting but still don’t have a suspect.
“We’ve done an extensive amount of research with the evidence we’ve gathered so far in the case,” Prince George’s County police Cpl. Nicholas Clayton said.
“Our investigators have traveled out of state. They’ve gone as far as doing as many canvasses and interviews as they could possibly do.”
But four years after the murder, we still have not been able to make an arrest in that homicide, Clayton said.
It’s been almost two years since a security officer on duty at the Santee Cooper Utility missed a two-way radio check-in which started the search for 55-year-old Michael Curry.
Police, search dogs, fire departments, search and rescue teams and numerous other agencies would eventually be called in and conduct numerous searches on land, in water and by air.
Authorities have not found evidence of foul play nor have they found any signs that Curry is alive or dead.
Murray was a contracted security officer employed by a Columbia South Carolina firm called Security Management. He had worked at the same location for fifteen years.
Curry was married with grown children.
State authorities have classified this as a missing person case which remains open.
A day of holiday joy turned into a nightmare for Jeffrey Bellemare’s family in the wee hours of Black Friday. Bellemare, an on-duty security officer was gunned down at a Maryvale Arizona apartment complex nearly six years ago.
Bellemare, 59, enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday with family and then went off to his nighttime retirement job as a security guard at a Maryvale apartment complex.
Police admit that leads have been slow to come by but earlier this year they circulated a sketch of a man and a woman that may have been involved in the shooting.
But police confirmed that it’s unclear whether the woman or her male companion pulled the trigger that ended Bellemare’s life.
Because of prior dangerous incidents, Bellemare requested that his company transfer him to a different assignment but he was killed before that could happen.
A Marine veteran who dreamed of becoming a police officer was gunned down while working as a security officer at an Aurora Colorado marijuana dispensary.
Travis Mason was killed during a robbery attempt just before closing at the Green Heart dispensary, Aurora police have said. Mason, 24, was shot three times, and he died of a gunshot wound to the head, an autopsy report determined.
Despite more than $55,000 being offered as a reward for information on who committed the crime, few leads have come into police and the June 2016 murder is still unsolved.
Atlanta police have struggled for the past thirty-nine years to solve the murder of one of their own.
Atlanta Police Officer and Vietnam veteran Alfred Johnson Jr. was working a side job as a security guard at a grocery store in East Atlanta in February 1980.
Investigators say two robbers held up the store.
Johnson was trying to protect customers when the robbers shot him. And died minutes after arriving at the hospital.
Over the years, the case went cold.
Throughout the nearly four decades since Johnson’s murder, the loss has taken a hard toll on the family.
“We try and bring out every joyful thing that we can, you know, because you can grieve yourself until it just makes you sick. That’s what happened to my dad. He grieved himself to death,” his daughter said.
It is the Atlanta Police Department’s only unsolved officer killing.
Open security officer homicide cases still sit unsolved in across the nation including Illinois, Texas, Ohio, Florida and California. Police say, that they are doing the best that they can.
