Montco Town Gets License to Fox Memorial Site

By Mischa Arnosky

The Plymouth Township Council announced recently that PECO has granted the township a license to the roughly 10-by-10-foot site where Plymouth Township Police Officer Brad Fox was killed.

Council President Sheldon Simpson said township employees already maintain a memorial for the fallen officer at the site, which is along the Schuylkill River Trail. The license — which was described as “less intricate than a lease” — alleviates liability for the energy company. 

“Because it’s not our property, and we have our people working on it, we had to get an agreement with PECO,” Simpson said. “It started out as a natural site where people would just come down and leave stuff, and our public works department decided, ‘You know what, this has got to be something,’ so they actually built that whole memorial there. They go down and mulch, pull the weeds, and water the flowers on their own. They’re not asked to do it.”

Simpson said the county plans to install a brass plaque at the site in September; he added that the county helped work out the details with the license. 

Officer Fox was killed Sept. 13, 2012 after responding to a hit-and-run on Ridge Pike. He followed a silver SUV that went speeding past in the wrong lane of travel. After the driver exited the vehicle, Fox began a foot pursuit in an industrial area with K-9 partner Nick, rounded a corner along a train track, and was shot and killed. The man who shot Fox then killed himself.

The man who purchased the gun that killed Fox was sentenced last week.

On the permanent memorial, Simpson said: “Having the plaque really means that the future generations will know what happened and they will always be able to relate to that spot. It’s like anything else — over time, things fade, no matter what it is. The memorial’s nice, and hopefully it will continue forever, but the plaque being placed there will immortalize it. You’ll ride past there and you’ll know what happened there and if you want to look it up, you can research it and see exactly what the whole thing was about.”