County unveils monument to honor Tucker Blakely
By Ken Lay
The Knox County Sheriff’s Office and the Powell Community honored one of their own early last week.
The county unveiled a stone memorial monument to honor fallen sheriff’s deputy Tucker Blakely on Tuesday afternoon.
The monument is located at the corner of Emory Road and Brickyard Road, just one block from where Blakely attended high school and played in the Powell High band.
Blakely was killed in the line of duty on Oct. 2, 2023, while answering a domestic violence call, leaving behind his wife, Katarina, and son, Hendrik.
Blakely’s widow spoke at the dedication, along with Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, Knox County Commissioner Rhonda Lee and Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler.
The sheriff was emotional in his remarks.
“When one of my officers, one of my deputies, gets hurt or makes the ultimate sacrifice, that’s on me,” Spangler said. “He won’t be forgotten. All I can say is, ‘I’m sorry, Tucker, job well done, young man. You served us well. Thank you.’
“This memorial means an awful lot to this community, but it also means a lot to the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. This memorial here stands as a promise that we will never forget his courage, his kindness or the ultimate sacrifice he made to keep our community safe.”
“We can’t take away the heartache from the family and everybody who loved Tucker,” Commissioner Lee said. “We can’t bring back the son. We can’t bring back the husband, and we can’t bring back Daddy.
“But one thing we could do is do something to remember Tucker.”
Jacobs noted that Blakely’s loss left a loss for the sheriff’s office, the Powell Community and across Knox County.
“His loss is felt by this community and to all of Knox County,” he said. “This serves as a message to his family that he won’t be forgotten and that our men and women in blue step forward when others step back.”
Katarina said that the memorial will forever honor Tucker’s memory and serve as a spot where Hendrik can come and see his father.
“It’s nice … that’ll be a memory for future generations who won’t have known Tucker (and) their families that don’t know him, thinking that they can come up here and see (this),” she said.
