Updated at 1 p.m., Oct. 27, 2014
City officials renamed a Skyline park Monday for slain San Diego police Officer Christopher Wilson — four years to the day after he was killed in a shooting.
Skyview Neighborhood Park at 7226 Skyline Drive will now be known as Officer Christopher Wilson Memorial Park.
Mayor Kevin Faulconer, Councilwoman Myrtle Cole and SDPD Chief Shelley Zimmerman attended the renaming ceremony, at which a monument dedicated to Wilson was unveiled.
“Families come here, and children come here. From now until forever, they’ll know what type of person that Officer Christopher Wilson is — I won’t say was, but is, because his legacy will live on in everyone that he touched,” Zimmerman told 10News.
Wilson was part of a raid by U.S. marshals and county probation officers.
The law enforcement officers were met with a hail of gunfire at an apartment on South Meadowbrook Drive, and Wilson, a 50-year-old married father of two, was fatally shot.
Two people in the apartment died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, according to investigators. Alex Charfauros, a probationer arrested at the address, was imprisoned for 85 years for failing to tell officers that armed people were holed up in his apartment. He was given an extra year in prison for trying to dissuade a witness.
The fallen officer’s daughter, Kaylee Wilson, told 10News that although the ceremony was a somber occasion, a memorial in the neighborhood where he helped people was a fitting tribute.
“This is where he would want to be memorialized,” she said. “This is the neighborhood he loved.”
—City News Service