Crime & Safety
Procession for Fallen Arizona Firefighter Leads to Long Beach
The hearse carrying the body of Arizona firefighter Kevin Woyjeck passed through Cerritos en route to Forest Lawn in Long Beach.
The public and safety officers gathered on city streets Wednesday afternoon to pay their respects to 21-year-old Kevin Woyjeck, one of 19 fallen firefighters who perished while battling a fire near Yarnell, Ariz., on June 30.
The bodies of Woyjeck, a Seal Beach native, and 30-year-old Christopher MacKenzie, who was raised in the San Jacinto Valley, were flown to the Southland Wednesday and placed in hearses during a somber ceremony at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos.
Following the ceremony, firefighters along with several other first responder units escorted their bodies to mortuaries in preparation for funeral services.
The hearse carrying Woyjeck's body traveled down Del Amo Boulevard, along the Cerritos-Lakewood border, en route to Forest Lawn in Long Beach.
The procession moved down Del Amo about 2:30 p.m. as community members of all ages and local firefighters, deputies and paramedics lined the sidewalks to pay respect to the fallen hero.
A memorial fund for the Woyjeck family has been established at the F&A Federal Credit Union, account number 177222-2625.
Woyjeck is survived by his parents Joe and Anna, his brother Bobby and sister Maddy.
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Woyjeck & MacKenzie: Their Local Ties
A graduate of Hemet High School in 2001, MacKenzie started his career as a seasonal firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service. He served on the Tahquitz crew in the San Jacinto National Forest. He then served on a helicopter crew for the Bureau of Land Management and the Mill Creek hotshots in the San Bernardino National Forest. He was invited to apply to the Granite Mountain hotshot crew by Aaron Stevens, one of his former captains, and had just started his third season as a full-time employee with the Prescott Fire Department as a lead crewmember, according to Cal Fire.
The two firefighters were among 19 firefighters with the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshot Crew, an elite wildland firefighting unit, who died near Yarnell, Ariz., on June 30 in the worst wildland firefighting loss in the U.S. since the 1933 Griffith Park Fire in Los Angeles, where 29 firefighters were killed.
To learn more about memorials, and to view images and read more about the memorial ceremony that took place on Wednesday in Los Alamitos, visit Los Alamitos-Seal Beach Patch.
Find out what's happening in Belmont Shore-Napleswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
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