Thousands honor BSO Air Rescue Battalion Chief Terryson Jackson at ceremony after line-of-duty death in helicopter crash
Thousands gathered Friday morning to honor the life of Battalion Chief Terryson Jackson, 50, who died in the line of duty when a Broward Sheriff's Office helicopter crashed into an apartment building in Pompano Beach.
SUNRISE — Thousands gathered Friday morning to honor the life of Battalion Chief Terryson Jackson, 50, who died in the line of duty on Aug. 28 when a Broward Sheriff’s Office helicopter crashed into an apartment building in Pompano Beach.
Officers, firefighters, paramedics and command staff from nearly every city in Broward and as far as Orlando and Monroe County watched as the coffin with Jackson’s body, draped in an American flag, was carried down from a Fire Rescue 85 truck outside of the Faith Center church in Sunrise. Above them, two technical rescue aerial ladders crossed each other in the sky, another flag hung between them.
Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony walked ahead of the procession, followed by Jackson’s family members, including his parents, siblings, daughter and son.
“Terry loved what he did; he knew the risk but yet he did it anyhow, which makes him true hero,” said Jackson’s brother, Broward Sheriff’s Office Sgt. Cleavone Brooks, who was joined on stage by Jackson’s son, Jalen. “But before he was a hero he was just my big brother.”
Jackson, Brooks, and their mother, Dorothy Jno-Finn, emigrated to the U.S from Dominica, Brooks said. Jno-Finn also attended the service but didn’t speak.
Over 3,000 people filled the the auditorium, officials estimated.
Jackson worked for the Sheriff’s Office for 19 years. He died as a Fire Rescue captain, but Tony promoted him to Battalion Chief after his death.
The helicopter was responding to a car crash when the pilot, Daron Roche, reported an engine fire and a left engine failure, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The helicopter’s tail began to break off in the sky, video footage showed, and it crashed into the apartment building soon after.
Roche and the paramedic, Mike Chaguaseda, survived with injuries. But Jackson didn’t make it out, Tony said. A woman living in the apartment, Lurean Wheaton, was also killed. The Broward Sheriff’s Office has offered to pay for her funeral in addition to Jackson’s. Four others were injured.
Friends, family and fellow first responders remembered Jackson Friday as a man who loved his job and his fellow fire rescue officers like family, putting them above everything else, even in the seconds before his own death.
On Christmases and Thanksgivings, his first cousin, Earl Carlton Dangleben said, Jackson couldn’t visit him in Houston because, if he were to get called, someone else would have to show up for work instead.
He didn’t even let his family celebrate his 50th birthday, his sister, Dr. Sanjie Jackson said, telling them he wanted to work.
She was never able to give her brother the present she had planned. Her last conversation with him was trying to organize getting him a wristlet.
Jackson was also a devoted father, his father, Oliver, said, “meticulous” in taking care of his young daughter, Mikayla.
“The attention he paid to her was so immense,” he said.
And Jackson was so doting on Brooks’ daughter, his little brother said, that he would respond instead when she called for her father.
“I was waiting for a grand time like his wedding to say all these awesome things about him,” Brooks said. “But this has taught me that I cannot wait to give people their flowers.”
Those who served with and under Jackson did not just lose a coworker or a role model, but a brother.
For Broward Fire Rescue Captain Jeffrey Guillaume, Jackson was both a peer and a leader; Jackson later was promoted and became his boss. He had “a unique bond with every person he took in,” Guillaume said. “He made everyone feel wanted.”
When Jackson “made driver” and was asked to cook for the crew, Guillaume said, he told everyone, “‘I’m not cooking because it’s my day off!'”
“It’s your day off, my friend,” he said. “Rest easy, because we’ve got it from here.”
It remains unclear what caused the crash that took Jackson’s life. The Broward Sheriff’s Office had long spoken about the need for new Air Rescue helicopters, Tony said in the days following the crash. The helicopter that crashed that day was built in 1999 and purchased by the Sheriff’s Office in 2010. After Jackson’s death, the Sheriff’s Office grounded all of its remaining helicopters for inspections. Meanwhile, Broward County added $15 million to the Sheriff’s Office budget for a new helicopter.
In closing remarks Friday, Tony said that the Aviation Unit “has a great burden on our shoulders right now.”
“You can choose to second guess, or pull out yourselves, about what you could’ve done differently,” he said. “Quite frankly, there’s nothing that could’ve been done.”
The day of the crash, Tony said, he visited Roche, the pilot, in the hospital. When he entered the room, Roche began to recite all the things he could have done to try to maintain the helicopter
In the auditorium Friday, Tony asked Roche, who was in the audience, to stand up. As the pilot held his face in his hands and cried, Tony told him to put down the burden he knew he was carrying, the “burden that comes with trying to do everything you can, not to control and recover an aircraft, but to save your own friends.”
Tragedy either tears families apart or brings them together, Tony said. The same is true of the Aviation Unit.
“We are not going to pull each other apart,” he said. “We are going to bond, we are going to be closer than ever.”
Outside of the church after the ceremony, officials fired rifle shots into the air. Five helicopters flew overhead.
Fire Rescue Captain Brion Poitier knew Jackson for over 20 years. He did not die in vain, he said.
When the helicopter was going down that day, Poitier recalled, Jackson looked back at Mike, the paramedic.
“He said, ‘We’re gonna be okay,'” he said. “Even in that moment, not knowing if they were going to survive, he reassured his friend.”
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