Sergeant Dwayne Polk was killed this weekend after investigators say his pickup was hit by a suspected drunk driver. The family says Polk was working an extra job, trying to support his children as a single father.
The family's pain is very raw. As the suspect sits in jail, relatives say they are suffering, especially his young son, and his mother, who says she was his best friend.
"Well, he loved his mother, he loved his mother," said his mother, Doris Polk.
And Doris loved her son, 47-year-old Harris County Sheriff Sgt. Dwayne Polk. He was her right-hand man.
"He was always helping me out," she said.
Even as he was a devoted single father to his 10-year-old son.
"Good father, involved in school, involved in church," Doris said.
But the past few days have been rough for Doris and her entire family, ever since they got a call early Sunday morning about a crash involving Sgt. Polk and an alleged drunk driver.
"My daughter came in and she just told me to sit down and told me what had happened," Doris recalled.
Houston police say Sgt. Polk was on his way home from second job. He was in uniform when police say Andres Munos crashed into Polk at the intersection of North Shepherd and West Little York. The 16-year veteran died at the scene.
"I couldn't say anything on the phone," said Polk's nephew Edwin Deese. "I just dropped my phone and I kneeled down at the stairs. Immediately what came to mind was, what do I tell my grandmother? What do I tell my mother? Or even more, what do I tell his 10-year-son that has not only lost a friend, but has most importantly lost a father."
We were there as Sgt. Polk's lieutenant gave his badges to his mother -- a mother who is now trying to find the strength to go on without her son.
"Her son, that was her best friend," Deese said. "And the guy, he didn't just take a father, he didn't just take a son or a brother or an uncle, but he took her best friend."
Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement say Munos, 22, is an illegal immigrant from Mexico. He was deported in July 2012. He is being held in the Harris County Jail on an ICE detainer.
Relatives plan to bury Sgt. Polk on Saturday.
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