Services Tuesday for deputy who died after 2016 ambush

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Funeral services will be held Tuesday for a Louisiana sheriff’s deputy who was shot in the head and stomach during a July 2016 ambush that killed three other law enforcement officers during protests over the police killing of a Black man.

Nick Tullier, of Denham Springs died Thursday. He was 47.

Services will begin at 1 p.m. at Healing Place church in Baton Rouge, and a procession will take Tullier’s body to the Evergreen Memorial Park in Denham Springs where a graveside ceremony will be held with full honors.

All services will be open to the public.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards ordered that flags fly at half-staff over the Capitol and other public buildings in East Baton Rouge Parish until sunset Friday in Tullier’s honor. He called Tullier, a corporal in the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office, and the other officers shot in the July 17, 2016, shooting “true heroes.”

The Sunday morning ambush came less than two weeks after Alton Sterling, a Black Baton Rouge resident, was fatally shot in a struggle with two white Baton Rouge police officers outside a convenience store. No officers were ever charged for Sterling’s death, although the local government reached a $4.5 million settlement with his family years later.

Two days after the Sterling shooting, a sniper in Dallas killed five police officers and wounded seven others during protests over the shootings of Sterling and the July 6 shooting death of Philando Castile.

The ambush ended when the suspect was shot and killed. He was identified as Gavin Long, 29, of Kansas City, Missouri, a Black military veteran. He died after killing Baton Rouge police officers Montrell Jackson and Matthew Gerald and another East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s deputy, Brad Garafola.

Tullier, a father of two sons, had 18 years of service with the sheriff’s department when he was shot.