Detroit Police Officer Loren Courts, killed in the line of duty on July 6, 2022, is being remembered by his former coworkers at the Livingston County Costco store as a “joy” and a “shining light.”
Courts, a five-year veteran of the Detroit Police Department, and his partner responded to 911 calls of shots fired near Joy Road and Marlowe Street on Detroit’s west side. According to reports, a man wielding a Draco assault rifle — a weapon similar to an AK 47 — was shooting indiscriminately, and he began firing at the officers when they arrived. Courts was shot and killed before the second office returned fire and killed the suspect.
Courts worked at the Livingston County Costco store in Green Oak Township from November 2004 until February 2017, according to sources, leaving the store after he graduated from the police academy and joined the Detroit police force. Courts worked at Costco as a cashier, as well as a merchandise stocker.
“He was such a light in the world that you just wanted to be around,” said former co-worker Lauren Kovach of Brighton. “And now he has paid the ultimate sacrifice, working at the career he loved so much.”
Kovach described Courts as “incredibly funny” and “so joyful.”
Another former co-worker told GIGO News that when Courts punched out for the last time at Costco that every employee in the store stopped working and gave him a round of applause as he left the building.
“We were all so proud and sad at the same time,” said former co-worker Nicole Lacy of Milford.
Courts’ wife, Kristine Courts, said in a Facebook post that while all the news articles of her husband’s shooting talk about him as a Detroit Police Department officer, “he was so much more than that to me and the kids.”
He was their “Batman,” she wrote, adding that he was “an amazing dad, my best friend, and the man I married.”
“I’m broken, I can’t imagine how we are going to live without him,” she wrote.
Courts — who leaves behind two children, ages 15 and 9 — “comes from a long history of law enforcement officers,” said Detroit Police Chief James White. Court’s father recently retired from the department.
A fundraiser has been set up to help his family. You can contribute by clicking here.
