COLUSA COUNTY, CA (MPG) – Although Colusa County does not formally recognize its fallen police officers during National Police Week or on Peace Officer Memorial Day, Supervisor Merced Corona on May 7 gave a reverent nod to those who were killed last year in the line of duty.
Corona, whose daughter was killed in 2019, attended two ceremonies in Sacramento, including a candlelight memorial on May 5 for the eight officers killed in 2023 in California.
“Four of them were lost to gunfire, so it was a solemn event but very well attended,” Corona said.
Peace Officer Memorial Day and National Police Week are observances in the United States that pay tribute to local, state, and federal peace officers who have died or been disabled in the line of duty.
In 2023, 138 peace officers in the U.S. and 25 K9s were killed. Of those, 48 officers and 10 K9s were killed by gunfire.
Hundreds gathered on May 6 in Sacramento for the 46th annual California Peace Officers’ Memorial Ceremony at the state Capitol, where the names of the 2023 officers were added to the Memorial Monument. One of the officers was honored in the category “Distant Past Honored Officer” after he lost his life in the line of duty in 1959.
More than 1,600 peace officers have been killed in California since it became a state in 1850. There has been no death of a peace officer living or serving in Colusa County since Corona’s daughter, Davis Police Officer Natalie Corona, of Arbuckle, was shot and killed while working a traffic accident on Jan. 10, 2019. The gunman was found dead the following day of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Corona, 22, left behind her parents and three younger sisters. Her name was added to the California Peace Officer Memorial in Capitol Park, Sacramento, and the National Memorial in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2020.
Colusa County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael W. McClung, 23, of Williams, was killed July 2, 1984, after being hit by a train while on patrol near Myers Road. He died instantly. He left behind a wife and 8-month-old-son.
Game Warden Leon H. Nelson, 36, of Colusa, was killed on patrol in the Mendocino National Forest, after his vehicle rolled off the side of the steep forest highway that runs between Colusa and Glenn counties on Oct. 27, 1979. He left a wife and four children.
Colusa Town Marshal Jasper Newton Scroggins, 60, was shot and killed trying to take an ex-con into custody on April 18, 1919, in a barn that was located on the corner of Bridge and Webster streets. The killer, Thomas Woods, spent the rest of his life in prison. Scroggins, who was a Colusa peace officer for 23 years, left a wife and two adult children.
Colusa Town Marshal John T. Arnold, 30, was shot and killed on March 2, 1878, at a store on Market and Fifth streets (Odd Fellows Building) by former District Attorney Dudley Shepardson. Shepardson, who was later acquitted of murder, shot Arnold four times as Arnold approached him to serve a misdemeanor warrant. Arnold had been a local peace officer for 10 years. He left a wife and two children.
Colusa County Sheriff’s Deputy John A. McClain, 38, was killed on Sept. 27, 1870, in a shootout while serving an eviction notice on squatters in the Antelope Valley, west of Maxwell. He was shot in the head and died instantly. McClain left a wife and four children.
Their names are on the National Memorial in Baltimore and the California Peace Officer Memorial at the State Capitol, which was dedicated on May 13, 1988.