With the clumsy, stiff-armed wave of a toddler, Hudson Leeding said goodbye to his daddy.
The 2-year-old looked confused as he was led away from the hearse carrying Detective Senior Constable Damian Leeding's coffin. For a moment he reached back. Then his attention was gone, swept away by the activity around him.
Earlier, with his baby sister Grace and mother Sonya beside him, the boy sat through an outpouring of tributes at yesterday's public funeral for a father he'll grow up without.
That future was sealed 10 days ago when the policeman was shot in the face when he went to help victims of a Gold Coast tavern hold-up.
"The general public may not have known much about Damo, but the local crooks sure did," Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Procter told mourners. "He had a distinct dislike for anyone dealing with drugs."
He spoke, too, of his joke of planting rubber snakes at crime scenes.
On the day of the shooting, Procter called him to rub in Manly's win over Leeding's beloved Broncos. "Had I known that this was the last time I'd speak to Damo, I would have had so much more to say," he said.
- AAP
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