Three Kansas City firefighters were among nearly a dozen honored by the State of Missouri over the weekend.
Ten Missouri firefighters were killed in the line of duty between 2021 and 2025.
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The Missouri Fire Department held two memorial services at the Fire Fighters Memorial of Missouri in Kingdom City to remember the individual firefighters who gave the ultimate sacrifice.
The following firefighters from the Kansas City region were honored over the weekend:
Captain Vernon Collett, Johnson County Fire Protection District
- Captain Collett, 60, died after suffering a medical emergency on March 8. He was trying to extinguish a controlled burn that had grown out of control at the time. Collett dedicated nearly 29 years to protecting the people of Johnson County according to the Missouri Fire Marshal’s Office.
Graham Hoffman, Kansas City Fire Department paramedic/firefighter
- Hoffman, 29, died after he was stabbed while treating a patient in an ambulance on April 27. He’d served the Kansas City area for more than five years.
Matthew Shafer, Lawson Fire-Rescue Protection District firefighter/EMT
- The 21-year-old died from complications of severe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder on June 4, 2021. He served Clay and Ray counties for more than six years at the time of his death.
The firefighters’ names have been put on the monument wall at Missouri’s Fire Fighters Memorial.
Gov. Mike Kehoe also declared October 5 as Fire Service Memorial Day in Missouri.
