Who Was Constable Robert Plunkett?
Posted August 2, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
He was both an officer and gentleman. The loss of Constable Robert Plunkett in a tragic takedown Thursday morning isn’t affecting just the members of his family and his colleagues on the force. Plunkett is being remembered as one of the true good guys by those who knew him and those who lived near him. He lost his life while trying to affect an arrest around 5am in a quiet Markham neighbourhood.
Plunkett was a 22-year veteran of the York Regional Police. He joined in 1985 and at the time of his death was a long standing member of the Special Services Unit within the Intelligence Bureau. What do they do that might have put him in the figurative line of fire? “They support our criminal investigators in the field,” Dep. Chief Bruce Herridge explains.
But he was more than just a man in uniform. For eight years he served with the Emergency Response Unit and in1998 he was recognized for bravery after rescuing a senior from drowning.
While he was a prolific presence behind the badge, off duty Plunkett commanded just as much respect. He’d been involved with the Special Olympics for years (top left), and even chaired the event in 2000. He was a tireless fundraiser for the event that helps the disabled compete in sporting challenges they might otherwise never get a chance to participate in. “Payment in our hard work comes at special moments, the look of joy and happiness on their faces,” he commented during one recent gathering.
But there’s no joy on any faces now. “There’s going to be an enormous sense of loss,” confirms Glen MacDonell of the Ontario Special Olympics. “He volunteers all over Canada and the world, really. He had an innate ability to make people feel good around him. We are very, very sad about this.”
Neighbours are already feeling his absence. Even normally stoic teenagers are breaking down at the thought they won’t be seeing Plunkett again. “He gave us everything he had and now he’s gone,” Brian Hughes relates, a tear streaming down his cheek. “There’s never anything you couldn’t like about him. Now he’s dead.”
His wife and three teenage children are pleading for privacy as they attempt to process the enormity of their loss. Robert Plunkett was just 43 years old.
