With an escort tailing him Wednesday, Curtis Ayers made it inside the Wyandotte County Jail.
Ayers, 29, is charged with capital murder and will call the jail’s medical unit home as he awaits his trial for shooting and killing Kansas City, Kansas, Police Detective Brad Lancaster.
“What's going to be hard now is waiting till the actual trial, there’s going be a long time period,” Trudy Meyers, the widow of a fallen officer, told 41 Action News.
On the morning of Jan. 14, 1998, a drunk driver killed her husband, Kansas City Police Department Officer Thomas Meyers. The man behind the wheel was three times the legal limit; however, at the trial, Meyers said he didn’t show any emotion.
“There was no remorse whatsoever to it. [He said] it wasn't his fault, it was somebody else’s,” Meyers said.
Since then she's received support from an organization called Concerns of Police Survivors, otherwise known as COPS. She learned about them during her husband's visitation when a 12-year-old child of a fallen officer came up to her and spoke to her.
“We have to go, we have to be there for the next family,” Meyers recalled the girl telling her.
Lancaster is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Meyers shared some advice for the daughters during the legal process.
“Let them go, have somebody available if the child needs to leave that they could take them and mom can stay,” Meyers said.
She also imparted some words to Mrs. Lancaster.
“Know that people are thinking of you and that we care and that we will be there when you're ready for us,” Meyers said.
For more information on the COPS organization visit http://www.nationalcops.org or https://www.facebook.com/nationalcops/.
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Andres Gutierrez can be reached at andres.gutierrez@kshb.com
