Monument for fallen Charlotte officer found dumped in creek bed

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Some people are outraged after a memorial to a fallen Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officer was found dumped in a creek near University of North Carolina-Charlotte.

"From the moment I saw it I knew what it was. That it was a monument to Andy," said Larry Cullingford, who manages a condominium complex near the creek where the granite monument to officer Andy Nobles was found in May.

IMAGES: Monument for fallen Charlotte officer found dumped in creek bed

Nobles was working along West Boulevard in October 1993 when he was shot and killed along with Officer John Burnette.

The monument was commissioned soon after that by the residents of the Colville and Shannon Green condominiums where Nobles was living and working as a security officer at the time he was killed.

It had stood there for 20 years but no one can say when it was removed.

"It was thrown out like a piece of trash and that's what hurts," said Jerry Esposito, a retired CMPD officer who managed to get a local towing company to pull the monument made of solid granite out of the creek.

He called the homeowners association of that condominium complex and said they told him they asked a landscaping company to take it away.

"They advised me they no longer had need for it or wanted to retain it," Esposito said. 

He said the people he spoke with did not know that it had ended up in the creek a block away.

Late Friday afternoon, a member of the board told Eyewitness News he did not tell Esposito that they had the monument moved, and said he had not even seen it on the property since he had lived there.

But Esposito is now focusing on getting the monument where it needs to be. He hopes it will be at the department's training academy and he is speaking with monument companies about restoring it.

"So we've got it and we're going to restore it because they deserve it," Esposito said. "We're trying to restore it to its original condition. It should be cleaned and polished -- police officers are cleaned and polished."

WSOC