Slain Sheriff's Deputy Laid to Rest

The funeral for Sgt. Lance McLean, the Hood County sheriff's deputy fatally shot in Granbury last week, was held in Hico on Tuesday morning.

McLean was killed while responding to a disturbance call at a Granbury home on Friday.

At the funeral service, McLean was remembered as a leader, a devoted public servant and jokester who loved to laugh and make others laugh.

Chaplain John Knox said McLean had a big, mischievous smile "that lurked under the towering cowboy hat."

"You always wondered what he was thinking and what he was up to," he said.

Sheriff's office employees said McLean always paid a visit to each department in the office when he was on duty, playfully picking on his co-workers.

One Hood County dispatcher admitted,

"We'd dish it right back," a Hood County dispatcher said. "He took it like a champ, and then we usually got one of our 'Lance' laughs."

That dispatcher told Knox that she and her co-workers are "going to miss Lance" stopping by the dispatch office.

McLean's fellow SWAT officers sat next to his casket Tuesday. In classic McLean fashion, they wore red bandannas around their necks, McLean's signature look.

Hood County Sheriff Roger Deeds said it annoyed McLean's SWAT commander when McLean would wear the bandanna. Deeds then laughed and said that's exactly why McLean wore it.

But beyond the laughs, his friends and family remember a kind person who touched many lives.

"He never talked down to people, and people loved him," Knox said. "People remember his mischievous smile, the way he entered a room with his usual greeting of, 'Hey man.'"

The chaplain recalled an afternoon when he and McLean were tasked with visiting a home to inform a family that a loved one had just been killed in a car accident.

"Lance was incredibly kind to this lady who was in such indescribable pain," he said. "He hugged her and he expressed compassion to her."

"Lance never knew that that brief partnership that we experienced that afternoon has had a huge impact on my life and my ministry as a chaplain," Knox said.

A state trooper backed Knox's feelings.

"Throughout one's life there are a few people you come in contact with that make you want to become a better man or make you a better man," the trooper said, saying McLean was one of those people..

McLean, a husband and father of two special needs children, was hospitalized in Fort Worth. He died from his injuries at 11:45 a.m. Saturday at John Peter Smith Hospital.

He was shot in the head by Ricky McCommas after the deputy responded to a disturbance call at a Granbury home. McCommas, who under threat of criminal trespass was warned to stay away from the home, was confronting a teenage girl who had accused him of sexual assault.

Witnesses said McCommas pulled out a gun and shot McLean when he arrived. McCommas then fled the scene before getting into a shootout with law enforcement near Granbury's town square.

Deeds said Tuesday that he fired the shot that killed McCommas, who died in the shootout.

Granbury police officer Chad Davis is recovering from an injured shoulder and bullet fragments in one knee after being shot in the shootout in Granbury. He was released from the hospital on Monday.

Anyone wishing to make a donation to McLean's family can do so at the Hico 1st National Bank. Click here to make a donation.