Thousands turn out to honor sheriff’s Deputy Robert Kunze
In little places and big spaces, people remembered Robert Kunze, the Sedgwick County sheriff’s deputy whose name everyone knows now.
In groups of two or three or thousands, they shared the things he did — including his last heroic action as he was fatally wounded along a rural blacktop on Sunday.
The remembrances this week culminated Friday when thousands came to honor Kunze’s life with a 10 a.m. service at Central Community Church in west Wichita.
An honor guard of law enforcement officers, in dress uniforms and white gloves, arrived at 8:30 a.m. to escort his flag-draped casket into the church.
By 8 a.m. Friday, people were setting flags and holding up signs along the planned procession route to Resthaven cemetery.
Tim Wooding, an Army veteran who owns property on the Maple route, was planning on going out of town on Friday. Instead, he stood in the drizzling rain alongside the road, after hanging three American flags from a post outside his building, waiting to show his respect for law enforcement and Kunze’s family.
“I had to be here,” Wooding said. “The only thing we can do, the community, is be here.
“It may not hit them (Kunze’s family) right now. It may not hit them for a days or weeks or months, so we have to keep supporting and showing we care, not just today, but for as long as it takes.”
For that, Wooding had a framed photograph memorializing Kunze printed Thursday, which he said he hopes Kunze’s family sees. He said he plans to keep the memorial in the lobby of his building for at least six months or a year so people don’t forget.
“It’s easy to forget,” Wooding said.
Kunze’s survivors wanted Friday to be a day of celebration.
But people also couldn’t help but show their grief sometimes. Robert K. Kunze III was a 41-year-old husband, father, brother, son who served 12 years with the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office. Much of southwest Sedgwick County was his beat. He had appreciative residents there well before his death.
One of the places where he was remembered is the store at the entrance to Lake Afton. He stopped in there for his diet Dr Pepper. “Every morning you could count on him being here,” said store administrative assistant Laurel Ford.
Ford smiled earlier this week as she recounted his visits. She smiled as she looked off, as if she could see the memory. At times, her smiles almost turned to tears.
One of the descriptions of him that spread after he died Sunday — in a gunfight while responding to a suspicious-character call north of Garden Plain on Sunday — was that he was a jokester.
At the lake store, Ford gave an example: One day, she said her car blinker wasn’t working.
“You need blinker fluid,” he quipped.
He would sometimes do paperwork in the store.
“But the minute he got a call, he was business,” she said. “He would fold up his laptop, and he would run.”
Kunze made his last call early Sunday afternoon at West 21st Street near 295th Street West.
It’s a remote intersection surrounded by crop fields, north of Garden Plain and about 21 miles west of downtown Wichita.
There, he encountered a convict on a crime spree who fatally wounded him above his protective vest. But before the deputy collapsed, he shot down his killer.
If Kunze hadn’t killed the man, two witnesses standing nearby could have been murdered by the desperate criminal, Sheriff Jeff Easter said.
He died saving lives, Easter said.
At the store where Kunze visited ritually for about five years, Ford knew that he wasn’t just stopping by to get his Dr Pepper. He told the employees he wanted to make sure they were safe. Ford knew he meant it.
This story was originally published September 21, 2018 at 9:54 AM.