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Photo by Sam Yu
Chad Steiner of Frederick and a captain of the Juniata College football team holds a football signed by the 80 members of the team for the family of Frederick Police Officer Richard Mark Bremer. |
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Chad Steiner, a senior captain on Juniata College's football team, had a ball and a letter in his bag Friday night. Both items were going to be given to his sister in Frederick who would then hand the bundle off to a member of the Frederick Police Department so it could be relayed to the family of fallen Frederick Police Officer Richard Mark Bremer. The football was signed by members of the team as a tribute to Bremer, who played for Juniata back in the early 1990s, Steiner said on his cell phone while riding on the team bus. The team left its Huntingdon, Pa., campus Friday evening en route to the Quality Inn on West Patrick Street in Frederick where they stayed overnight, before leaving for Baltimore this morning to play against Johns Hopkins. Steiner, who played at Frederick High, wrote a note expressing the team's condolences. "The team really wanted to do something to show he's still part of the family," Steiner said. "When you play college football, once you're part of the team, you're always part of the team." The idea of doing a tribute to Bremer occurred to Steiner after he learned about the tragedy. "I met him by accident at a basketball game," Steiner recalled. "It was a Frederick High School basketball game, maybe two years ago. He was standing next to me, saw I was wearing my football sweatshirt and started talking to me." The officer mentioned he'd played on the team as well, Steiner said. Bremer was a linebacker, Steiner said. The next time Steiner talked to Bremer was in the spring of 2008. Steiner was taking a leave of absence from college for a shoulder injury and operation. Again, the officer recognized him at a sports game. "He was working," Steiner said. "He was usually on-duty for after-school games. He remembered me from before." Bremer, 39, died Oct. 23. He was pursuing a fleeing vehicle late Oct. 22 when his police cruiser crashed into a tree line bordering train tracks near the 500 block of East South Street in Frederick .
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