By Deanna Weniger
Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Corrections officer Joseph Gomm will be laid to rest Thursday with full honors.
The funeral for Gomm, who officials say was killed by an inmate July 18 at Stillwater state prison, is set for 11 a.m. Thursday, at North Heights Lutheran Church, 1700 W. Hwy. 96 in Arden Hills.
Jeff Beahen, president of the Minnesota Law Enforcement Memorial Association (LEMA), says the funeral could see up to 3,000 guests, most of them police and prison officers.
“This is going to be handled like any line-of-duty-death funeral LEMA has been involved in,” Beahen said. “When we do a full honors funeral, they get the whole shooting match.”
LEMA will handle logistics for the family as well as an honor guard, bagpipe band, firing line, bugler, flag folding and a horse-drawn caisson.
Beahen said LEMA is there to take the pressure off the family.
“They are really grieving and taken back by this,” he said. But, he added, they understand how much a full honors funeral means to other officers and to those Gomm worked with at the Stillwater prison.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating Gomm’s homicide. Gomm was attacked in an industry building at the prison and died of blunt-force trauma.
The BCA said the suspect, inmate Edward Muhammad Johnson, was moved to the Minnesota Correctional Facility — Oak Park Heights. Johnson is serving a sentence for a 2002 murder.
©2018 the Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minn.)