Memorial service set for slain Oakland police Officer Tuan Le

Memorial service set for slain Oakland police Officer Tuan Le

OAKLAND — A law enforcement memorial service honoring slain Oakland police officer Tuan Le will be held next Wednesday in Castro Valley, officials said Friday.

A private funeral service for family and friends of the officer will be held earlier in the week.

The law enforcement memorial, which is expected to be attended by hundreds of  local, state and federal law enforcement officers from throughout California and the rest of the nation, will begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday at 3Crosses Church, 20600 John Drive in Castro Valley.

Le, 36, was fatally shot the morning of Dec. 29 in the area of Fifth Avenue and the Embarcadero.  He and another officer were in an unmarked police truck, serving on an undercover detail, when he was shot.

Police first responded at about 1 a.m. to a cannabis-related business on the 400 block of Embarcadero near 5th Avenue for a burglary in progress but found nothing. Officers took a report, secured the area and left.

At 4:33 a.m., a team of plainclothes and uniformed officers responded to a second call about the same business. When they arrived, multiple suspects were seen fleeing. One of them fired multiple shots at the vehicle containing Le.

Days after the shooting, Oakland police, with the assistance of several other law enforcement agencies, arrested and charged the suspected shooter, 27-year-old Mark Demetrious Sanders, with murder.  Allen Starr Brown, the 28-year-old man driving the car, was also charged with murder: a third person was charged with burglary, but not murder, in the incident.

Le had been an Oakland police officer since 2019.  He is the 54th Oakland police officer to be killed in the line of duty since the department was formed in 1853 and the first to be killed on duty since 2009.