Blake Brooks knows Daddy is dead.
The 4-year-old son of Cpl. Courtney G. Brooks, a police officer killed by a hit-and-run driver on New Year's Eve, is aware that his father "is in heaven," said Derek Brooks, the officer's uncle.
The 13-year veteran of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police is to be buried with full police honors today at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens in Timonium after a funeral at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.
Brooks' youngest child, a 2-year-old girl named Raigen, "doesn't really know what's going on yet," the uncle said. Both are Brooks' children with his fiancee, Susan G. Geisler, with whom he lived in Hampstead. Brooks had another child, Casey, 17, from a marriage that ended in divorce.
Casey was left "devastated and numb" by her father's death, Derek Brooks said, and he has been trying to coax her out of her shell since they got the news. "I didn't want her to just ball up into a knot and not communicate," Brooks said. His late brother, Ronald Brooks, was the fallen officer's father.
While the family grieves, police continue to investigate the Dec. 31 accident. Brooks was struck by a sport utility vehicle as he set out cones on Interstate 95 to prevent trucks from gaining access to the Interstate 395 ramp during the New Year's Eve celebrations in downtown Baltimore. The owner of the vehicle, Kerri J. King, a 35-year-old stripper and mother of four, was arrested hours later but has not been charged. She is being held on a failure-to-appear warrant after a drunken-driving arrest in September.
Family members described Brooks, who was 40, as a relentless prankster and dedicated Notre Dame football fan who wrote poetry, dabbled in photography and teared up during soppy movies. They all called him "Spanky."
Brooks' sister, Kelli Tucker, three years his senior, said that every Christmas she would receive a gag gift from her brother.
"He'd find the ugliest thing in the world to give me, and he'd make a big presentation out of it," she said. "It was torture. I'd say, `Oh no, what it is this time?'"
This past Christmas, the gift was a stuffed "bipolar animal," Tucker said, a beast with a crazy side and another less so.
Tucker said her children, Jasmine, 9, and David, 19, have been badly upset by the death of their uncle. He was Jasmine's godfather and, for reasons no one could fathom, he called her Mugatay.
