Richland County Deputies attend 9/11 memorial services
September 14, 2026
Multiple services were held across the Midlands on September 11
By W. Thomas Smith Jr.
Deputies with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department (RCSD) along with fellow law-enforcement officers and first responders from various other agencies gathered to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, remembering and honoring the victims and the families of the victims of those attacks.
The services held throughout the day and in the early evening, Friday, began with a citywide memorial service – on the morning of – at Columbia’s 9/11 Memorial adjacent to the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center in downtown Columbia. That service was attended by throngs of law-enforcement leaders including Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott and those from other agencies including military leaders and state, city, and county officials.
“We will never forget the terrible events of 25 years ago nor the eternal sacrifices made,” said Sheriff Lott, who during the follow-on War in Iraq traveled to the Iraqi city of Erbil in 2010 to help establish that country’s first-ever female police academy. “Our memorializing that specific day and honoring those who perished in lower Manhattan, Northern Virginia, and in a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, is as important to us as any such-sacred day in our nation’s 250-year history.”
Later that evening, RCSD deputies attended several church services around the city and county including one at St. John Neumann Catholic Church in northeast Columbia and nearby Spring Valley Presbyterian Church (SVPC).
At SVPC the 30-minute service included music, the colors presented by church-affiliated Boy Scouts and remarks from both Pastor Ben Sloan and Elder Dean Nass, who witnessed and experienced first-hand the attacks in lower Manhattan from an adjacent office building which was heavily damaged when the World Trade Center towers collapsed.
An eight-deputy contingent from RCSD [pictured here with Pastor Sloan] attended the SVPC service and was recognized and warmly greeted by all attending members of the congregation.
Many RCSD deputy sheriffs served as members of the U.S. armed forces during the subsequent War on Terror including Deputy Ryan Rawl, a S.C. Army National Guard 1st lieutenant who in 2012 was killed by a suicide bomber in Khost, Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border. And RCSD deputies have lost family members during the war.
– W. Thomas Smith Jr., a special deputy with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department and a former USMC rifle squad (Infantry) leader, was himself at ground zero, New York, less than 48 hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also covered as a writer and military analyst the subsequent Global War on Terror traveling to Iraq twice during the war, the second time during the U.S. and British surge against Al Qaeda in 2007.
