Were it not a tragic reality, police lieutenant William Lebo’s death might sound like a movie cliché: The 63-year-old officer on the Lebanon City Police Department in Pennsylvania was shot and killed just 30 days before his scheduled retirement. On March 31, police received a call that a mentally disturbed man with a reported history of domestic violence had broken into a family member’s home. Lebo, a 40-year veteran of the force, joined his younger colleagues to respond to the call, but the suspect “immediately opened fire,” according to Lebanon County District Attorney Pier Hess Graf. “Officers performed life-saving measures on Lieutenant Lebo to no avail.” Lebo died without ever seeing his May 1 retirement party.
The two surviving officers — Ryan Adams and Derek Underkoffler, both 32 years old and seven-year veterans of the force — became part of a gruesome statistic: More police officers have been shot in the line of duty during the first three months of 2022 than during the same period in 2021, which was a record-breaking year for anti-police violence.
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