‘A jolly good old boy’: Friends remember Pembroke Pines Police officer killed in ‘freak accident’

Officer Charles “Charlie” Herring had a jolliness that was infectious, friends and family members say, even when he was a teenager growing up in Williston.

Herring and his close friend, Del Aqui, would suffer through high school football practices together, Aqui recalled. The football coach was also a track coach, which meant practices involved a lot of running in Williston’s humid, rainy weather.

But by the time he would reach the 5-yard line, Herring was already there, Aqui said, picking him up and making sure he got water.

“He was the guy who cheered you on,” Aqui said, “even though you were about to die from the heat.”

Herring, 54, a Pembroke Pines Police officer for 22 years, died Thursday in what many are calling a “freak accident” after a palm frond fell from a tree and knocked him off of his motorcycle.

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The accident occurred about 11:30 a.m. on 184th Avenue, just south of Sheridan Street, according to the Pembroke Pines Police. Herring was taken to Memorial Regional Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Herring is the first officer in the city’s history to die in the line of duty.

Herring had served in the U.S Army, then spent three years in Starke as an officer before joining the Pembroke Pines Police Department in 2001, according to a news release from the department.

He was also a father of four kids, a jokester, a lover of motorcycles and quiz bowl, a person to go to if you needed help, and just “a jolly good old boy,” as his friend and former fellow Pembroke Pines Police officer, Sean Dom, described him.

Herring was one of Aqui’s first friends in grade school when he moved to Williston from North Dakota, helping him feel more comfortable. They attended Williston High School together, where Herring was captain of the football team.

“The whole town loved that guy,” Aqui said.

He described Herring as friendly and very intelligent. They competed in quiz bowl together, and Herring specialized in sports and literature.

Herring later attended college in Ohio, served in the Army, then returned to Florida, where he worked as a bouncer at a bar in Gainesville. While there, he met Wendy Hand, a bartender there at the time, according to Kathy Hess, Hand’s mother. The two began a relationship, and Hand gave birth to Herring’s firstborn child, Hunter Herring.

“I liked him immediately,” Hess said. She said her daughter would tell her about how great of a person he was, and how funny he was.

“You could say something so simple, and he could make it so funny,” Hess said.

Herring and his son had a tradition called “cook-offs” at Herring’s parents’ house. Twice a year, the two would get together and have a barbecuing competition with friends and neighbors as the judges. Hess said the cook-offs continued, even as her grandson got older.

When she heard the news of his death, she was shocked.

“I just can’t believe he’s gone,” she said. “Because you think when they’re a police officer, it’s going to be something really really bad, some crime that takes them, not some freak accident like this.”

Herring started at Pembroke Pines as a patrol officer in 2001, when Dom met him, the former Pembroke Pines officer said. They worked together for 17 years; Dom retired in 2018.

He liked fishing with his kids, Dom said. Herring had three other children after Hunter, one of whom is a student at Sheridan Park Elementary School.

Herring also had always loved motorcycles, Dom and Aqui both recalled. In fact, Herring and fellow Pembroke Pines officers once rode their motorcycles all the way up to Tennessee to visit friends in 2019, where Dom had retired. That was the last time Dom saw him.

“When you work with each other in that line of work, you gotta trust each other,” Dom said. “You become a family; that’s basically your second family.”

A candlelight vigil will be held at 7 p.m. Friday at the police station at 9500 Pines Boulevard in Pembroke Pines.

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