MADISON COUNTY, Ill. — A police officer in the town of Brooklyn was killed early Wednesday on the McKinley Bridge while trying to stop a car fleeing from a nightclub in the Metro East region of southern Illinois.
Brian Pierce Jr., 24, who was identified by his family, was struck by a car around 3 a.m. while trying to deploy stop sticks on the bridge to flatten the fleeing car's tires, said Lt. Michael Lewis of the Illinois State Police. He had been with the force about nine months.
Police are still searching for the driver who hit the officer.
"He was born with a passion to be a police officer," Pierce's mother, Tammy Pierce, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "His favorite thing about police work was just being out in the public and stopping crime. He was all about that."
Pierce formerly worked for about two years with the police agency in Spillertown, Illinois, near Carbondale, and was also a lieutenant with the nearby Makanda Fire Department. He moved to Carbondale recently, and was making the 100-mile drive every day to work the night shift in Brooklyn, his mother said.
Brooklyn has about 10 officers in the department.
Brooklyn police said the suspect who hit Pierce was driving a red Dodge Charger with temporary Illinois tags and a black front end. The Dodge was last seen heading into Missouri from the McKinley Bridge, which crosses from Illinois into the Near North Riverfront neighborhood of north St. Louis.
Police had been chasing the suspect from Bottoms Up nightclub in Brooklyn. Investigators haven't said what happened at the nightclub that caused police to chase the Charger. Police were working to obtain video footage from the bar, authorities said.
Police later found the Charger abandoned in Missouri.
Pierce wasn't conscious or breathing when help first arrived. What appeared to be a body covered by a sheet remained on the bridge, in a westbound lane, hours later. The Madison County coroner arrived before 9 a.m. and the body was taken away by an ambulance.
After Pierce died, investigators on the bridge fired shots at another car whose driver crashed through a roadblock on the bridge. Illinois State Police, the Madison County sheriff's office and Brooklyn police were investigating Pierce's death about 3:50 a.m. when a gray Kia Optima sped through the roadblock, State Police said. The Kia hit police cars and nearly struck officers, authorities said.
Madison County sheriff's deputies and Brooklyn officers fired shots at the car and struck the driver. The Kia then crashed into two State Police vehicles.
The Kia's driver was shot and suffered injuries not believed to be life-threatening, police said. The driver and three passengers were arrested.
At daybreak, the car was still wedged between two police cars. Numerous evidence markers had been placed along the bridge span. Lewis described the back-to-back incidents as "chaotic."
Tammy Pierce said she met with officers who worked with her son and were investigating his death. She said they were visibly shaken. She said she was confident the driver would be arrested.
In addition to his jobs with Brooklyn police and Makanda fire, Brian Pierce also ran a company that installed police floodlights and other equipment for law enforcement agencies, his mother said. He was single and had no hobbies other than installing those police lights, she said.
His love of police work surfaced when he was a 3-year-old. "All he wanted to do was play with the Matchbox police and fire truck cars," she said.
Brooklyn police Capt. Antonio White said Pierce was "very energetic, he was always happy, always had a smile on his face."
"He'd come to work early because this is what he loved to do," White said. "He'd have your back 100%."
