LAS VEGAS — For the second time in three days, the Las Vegas police community was gathering Saturday to mourn an officer shot dead by a couple who went on to kill another person before they died in a shootout with police in a Wal-Mart store.
Alyn Beck, 41, will be remembered as a senior patrol officer, active church member and doting father of three who moved to Las Vegas from Wyoming and was close to promotion to sergeant before he was gunned down Sunday in a pizza shop where he stopped to have lunch with Officer Igor Soldo.
Soldo, 31, was originally from Bosnia and a married father of an 11-month-old boy. His funeral was Thursday.
A memorial is scheduled June 22 for Joseph Wilcox, 31, a Wal-Mart shopper and licensed gun owner from Las Vegas killed when he tried to draw his legally concealed weapon and stop the two rampaging assailants — Jerad and Amanda Miller — before they died in the Wal-Mart store.
Beck's service with full police honors will be held at the Smith Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Las Vegas. Burial will be in Wyoming.
Retired Las Vegas police Capt. Larry Burns spoke at Soldo's funeral of the loss of the two officers whose service helped people they may never have met.
"Our lives have been made better because men like Igor and Alyn have served us," Burns said.
Beck was originally from Green River, Wyoming, where family friend Ryan Dennett told the Rock Springs Rocket-Miner that he was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He spent spare time doing woodworking and carpentry, boating and water skiing on Lake Mead.
A cousin, Mike Beck, said Alyn Beck was a wrestler at Green River High School and worked at his uncle's ranch in the Kemmerer area.
Beck met his wife, Nicole, in Wyoming. They have a 14-year-old son, an 11-year-old daughter and a 10-month-old daughter.
Beck became a Las Vegas police officer in 2001 because he wanted to help others, and loved the job, Dennett said.