By Sarah Scinto
The Times-Tribune
PLYMOUTH, Pa. — An American flag at half-staff outside Wyoming Valley West High School rippled in the breeze above two lines of law enforcement officers as they stood at attention honoring fallen Correctional Officer Kristopher Moules.
The officers from near and far flanked the entrance to the school as friends, family and colleagues of Officer Moules filed inside to pay their final respects and lay the 25-year-old to rest.
“He’s going to be sorely missed by a lot of people,” said Officer Moules’s former coach, Al Brogna, who served as an honorary pallbearer at Tuesday’s funeral service.
He stood outside with the other honorary pallbearers, watching as the crowd mounted the high school steps and walked inside toward the gym.
There, fellow correctional officers stood guard over Officer Moules. His casket waited at the far end of the gym, draped with an American flag.
Officer Moules, a correctional officer at Luzerne County Correctional Facility, died July 18 when he and an inmate fell through an elevator door during an altercation.
The inmate, Timothy Gilliam, also died as a result of the fall.
Officer Moules had worked at the county prison for about 10 months.
Officer Moules’s LCCF colleagues filled a section of seats on the gymnasium floor sitting together in grey uniforms that echoed the subdued clothing of other mourners. Officer Moules’s family sat across an aisle from the officers.
The fallen officer’s uncle, Todd Moules, delivered a eulogy during the service and urged those in attendance to remember to smile in honor of his nephew.
“Smile, that way we know you’re thinking of Kris,” he said.
Todd Moules called his nephew a “remarkable young man” who served as a shining example for family and friends throughout his 25 years.
He told stories of Officer Moules’s childhood, when he was “a typical boy who got into typical trouble.” The crowd laughed at the remembrance of a time Officer Moules “almost” burned down his family’s house.
Mr. Moules spoke of his nephew as a baseball player and later, a coach, who wanted not only to develop his team as players, but help develop each player as a person.
“When Kris was your friend, you really had something special,” Mr. Moules said.
Mr. Brogna knew Officer Moules first as a player, but came to count him as a colleague and friend.
He said Officer Moules would never have believed that hundreds of officers and people would line up over the course of two days to pay their respects to him.
“Whether he was coaching, whether he was playing, whether he was a correctional officer — he just thought he was doing his job,” Mr. Brogna said. “He would not even fathom he would get this kind of send-off.”
As the service ended, the uniformed officers in attendance formed another line.
Starting with those from LCCF, they walked forward two at a time, paused before the casket, and raised their arms together to salute Officer Moules one last time.
After their final salute, some officers paused to offer a comforting hug and words of condolence to the fallen officer’s parents, Kenneth and Kitty Moules, and his brother, Kenneth II.