(Shinners and his family, courtesy Michael Shinners)
PROVO – Support for the family members of Provo Police Officer Joseph Shinners is coming in from all over the country. People are flying in from thousands of miles away just to be by his family’s side during his funeral tomorrow.
Members of the Everett Massachusetts Fire Department are making the 23 hundred mile trip to Salt Lake City, just to show their support for the Shinners family. Firefighter Sean Hogan says Shinners’ father, John, was once their fire captain, and he’s known Joseph Shinners for years.
“The best guy you could ever meet. That’s the best way to describe him. He would do anything for you and take the shirt off his back,” Hogan says.
He says the department started planning to make the trip even before Shinners was identified as the officer who was reportedly shot by Matthew Hoover. Hogan says police and firefighters work very closely, so it was crucial for them to be here.
“If roles were reversed and if it was me and my family, I know there would be a firefighter that I had never met and a police officer that I never knew his name would be standing beside my family,” he says.
Springville High School athletic trainer Lisa Walker knew Shinners from his time as a student there.
“He was just every bit as awesome and wonderful as they’re putting him out there to be,” she says.
She also knows Shinners wife, Kaylyn, when she was a student, plus she knows Shinners’ father-in-law from his time as the girls’ soccer coach. Walker has had former students pass away before, but Shinners’ death hit her especially hard.
“I think it was because it wasn’t just one, but it was the effect on two [former] students and a coach,” she says.
The funeral is scheduled for 11 a.m. at the UCCU Event Center on 800 West University Parkway.