Robert Leonard had joined the police force in December. (File)
A 35-year-old US police officer was found dead at the bottom of a river on Thursday, a day after he made his first ever arrest. The bodies of Robert John Leonard, a newly-appointed deputy sheriff in Tennessee, and the woman he arrested were recovered from the river along with the police car.
On Valentine’s Day, the police officer responded to a 911 call about a man and a woman fighting on a bridge around 10 pm. The woman was then taken into custody by Leonard who was driving her back to the police station.
Soon after the arrest, the officer sent a celebratory text to his wife sharing the news of his first arrest but her response to him was never delivered. Leonard’s last message to his police station mentioned “water” before the two went missing.
A search was launched later that night after attempts to contact Leonard failed. Police used satellite tracking to locate the car and on Thursday, it was pulled out from the bottom of the Tennessee river. The body of Tabitha Smith, the woman arrested by Leonard, was found inside the car.
The car’s driver seat window was rolled down and the policeman’s body was found near it on the riverbed. It is not known how the car plunged into the river but police believe Leonard was texting and talking on the radio while driving down an unfamiliar road.
Leonard had joined the police force in December. A long-time construction worker, he had recently moved to Tennessee with his wife and five children to fulfill his life-long dream of being a police officer, his obituary read.
“It’s a hard time here for us today. Something we don’t ever deal with here in Meigs County. We’re a small, rural county, we’re not used to it,” Meigs County Sheriff’s Office Chief Brian Malone told local media.