Virginia State Trooper Chad P. Dermyer served in the Marines before becoming a police officer in Jackson, Mich., and later in Newport News before joining the Commonwealth’s top police force.

He graduated from the academy in 2014 and was a popular trooper liked the his colleagues.

Superintendent Col. W. Stephen Flaherty told The Washington Post colleagues of Dermyers “have taken this very hard because of how well he was liked. Former Marine, you know the type, the demeanor that he had and the professional image.”

In January this year, News Channel 13 reported:

Traffic can always be strange in Hampton Roads, but something happened during the busy ride to work one recent Friday morning that shocked motorist Dave Floyd.

Two state troopers were running along Interstate 64, trying to chase down a little dog!

“They were like talking in the microphone running back and forth trying to catch him,” said Floyd.

One of those troopers was Chad Dermyer. They saved the dog and returned it safely to its owner.

He served first as a trooper and recently joined the counterterrorism and criminal interdiction unit of the state squad.

On Thursday, Dermyer participated in a training session at the Greyhound Bus Station in Richmond.

The Trooper, attired in all-blue military style fatiques, apparently saw something suspicious about a man’s behavior at the station and started to question him when the man pulled a gun and shot Dermeyer at point-blank range. The trooper was not wearing a vest.  He died at a Richmond hospital.

Two other troopers opened fire on shot and killed the attacker.

“If you see some suspicious behavior, go over and engage and have conversation,” State Police Superintendent Flaherty said.  “That was what was taking place.”

In the shooting, two civilians were injured: One was a Bingham University track athlete on her way to a meet.  Their injuries were described as “non life-threatening.”

Dermyers’ tragic death is the latest in an increasing fatalities in the area, region and nation.  A Prince George’s County officer died in a shootout with a gunman who said he wanted to die in a gun battle and had two brothers videotape the event.  Even more tragically, that officer died at the hands of another officer, who mistook the plainclothes colleague as a suspect.

The death of every police officer in the line of duty reminds us that they stand, and too often die, too often.  They are often our friends and/our members of our family.

Floyd Countian Scott Hylton, who served as a county deputy before joining the Christiansburg Police Department, died from a gunshot wound in a scuffle with a suspect on May 9, 2003.

A second Christiansburg officer, Eric Sutphin, was wounded after ramming the car of the escaping suspect.  He survived the wound but quit the force shortly afterwards, but police work was in his veins and he became a policeman again, joing the Montgomery County Sheriff’s office in August of 2004 — one year after leaving.

Sutphin, in 2005, told Joe Eaton of The Roanoke Times that he still remembers the sound of the shots that struck his body.

“It’s like I can still hear it more than I can still see it,” he said.

A year later, on August 21, 2006, an escapee who killed a security guard at Montgomery Regional Hospital also shot and killed Sutphin near the head of Huckleberry Trail in Blacksburg.

Police officer deaths stand at 30 in the country this year.

That’s 30 too many.

(Edited after original posting to add the death of Montgomery County Sheriff’s Deputy Eric Sutphin in 2006 and correct the number of police officer deaths in 2016)