COLLEGE STATION - The life and work of longtime local lawman and Precinct 1 Constable Brian Bachmann was remembered Saturday as a testament both to public service and a personal faith.
Bachmann, 41, who died Monday when serving a court-ordered notice of a pending eviction, was recalled by close friends and colleagues as kind, charitable and eager to help. He always saw the essential goodness of people even when they had broken the law, friends said, and he may have been the only officer in Brazos County who didn't carry a ticket book in his patrol car.
Bachmann's two-hour funeral service was attended by thousands, many of them in police uniform, and held at Reed Arena on the campus of Texas A&M University.
'He would forgive'
The shootings took place shortly after noon Monday when, without warning, Thomas Alton Caffall III began firing an assault rifle moments after Bachmann arrived at the house with an eviction notice.
Tommy Myrick, a reserve deputy constable and pastor at Christ United Methodist Church where Bachmann was a member, said his friend talked about how much he hated seeing evictions.
"He hated removing people from their homes, and he would help these people find a place to live and he would guard their belongings until they did," Myrick said. "There is no doubt in my mind that when he pulled up at the house that day he was thinking about ways to help him find somewhere to live. And there is no doubt in my mind that he would forgive that man for what he did."
Chris Northcliffe, the other fatality in the shooting spree, was remembered Saturday to a packed sanctuary of mourners at Our Saviour's Lutheran Church as a kind and creative spirit who lived happily and abhorred the sort of violence that randomly claimed his life.
Age-old questions
His widow, Christy, and two children heard him remembered as a talented artist who could dash off an impressive watercolor with little obvious effort, and a committed friend who never burned a bridge.
Northcliffe, 51, was walking down the street to meet a contractor when the shooting began, and was almost a block from Caffall's residence when the fatal bullet struck.
The Rev. Erich Schaefer said that Northcliffe's death, senseless as it seems, inspires a question that has been asked since man's earliest days.
"How is it that an innocent man, a beloved father and friend, is shot and killed in the prime of life?" Schaefer asked. "This is not the way it is supposed to be. How can this happen? I ask, where is God? These are questions we have always asked in the face of violence. It is the ancient question of the human heart. God is here, weeping, just as he was weeping at the tomb of Lazarus. Look around you today. Jesus is weeping with you."
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mike.tolson@chron.com
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