Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office Captain speaks about his friend, the late Sergeant Diaz

A cruiser now sits at the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office administration building, in support of fallen Sergeant, Elio Diaz.

Diaz was killed during a traffic stop Sunday when a man pulled out a rifle and opened fire.

Captain John Heck, spoke exclusively with WINK News on Wednesday. Heck shared many stories of Diaz, including his unconditional love for his job, his family and even strangers.

Right now, the entirety of CCSO is grieving.

“We’ll never forget him. It’s tough,” Captain Heck said about his great friend.

“Sergeant Diaz was that person that was always, always laughing, always having a good time, always willing to help out. You knew that family was the most important thing to him, besides the Sheriff’s Office and being a law enforcement officer,” Captain Heck said.

He continued to say, “He also was the type of person that he never really took credit for anything that he did, but he wanted to make sure that his team got the credit for what they were involved with and everything.”

“He was that guy that was always willing to help no matter what the circumstances were,” Captain Heck said.

The Sheriff’s Office memorial car is now displayed in his honor and it has already seen so much love. It’s located at 7474 Utilities Rd in Punta Gorda.

“We encourage the community: please keep doing the support. The family does see it. They do recognize it,” Captain Heck said.

On Tuesday, the family visited the memorial at the Chevron where Diaz died. Captain Heck was one of the deputies who escorted them there.

Diaz was known in the department for his homemade Cuban coffee as deputies would stand in lines just to get a cup.

Heck shared a story about Diaz’s special coffee, saying he wasn’t in line, only because he doesn’t drink coffee, but that didn’t stop Diaz from trying to make him drink it.

“When this is all over, even on Friday, I am going to have a small cup of Cuban coffee in his honor. Yes, he’s in heaven. He’s an angel overlooking us, and he will get a laugh out of that,” Captain Heck said.

Diaz is the fourth loss of life this department has faced.

“We’ll never be able to fill the loss that we have, but with the support of the community, we’re dealing with it, you know, we’re going to get through the. Hurt that we have the pain that we have, but our community is helping us get through that,” Captain Heck said.

Until Diaz is buried, a law enforcement officer is always with his body, to signify that his brothers and sisters in blue are always with him.

Captain Heck also spoke about the support or the “blue bond” from other agencies.

“We’ve had offers from all the surrounding counties that if we needed coverage for the services on Friday, that would help out with the services. The night of the incident, we had agencies from all around this show up and we didn’t even call them, but they heard what was going on, and they showed up to help us, support us, and take care of things, so our people could get off the scenes and kind of start managing their feelings and emotions that they were having that night,” said Heck.