The officers at SMU have spent their free time patrolling the banks of Turtle Creek ever since one of their own was swept away during a flash flood July 5 following two days of heavy rains. While search and rescue crews spent days on site, diving to search for Officer Mark McCullers, they turned up nothing in the days following his disappearance.
On Tuesday around 2:30 p.m., a SMU officer was walking an area about 3-miles from where McCullers disappeared when he came across a pile of debris he didn’t remember seeing during a previous patrol of the area. In it, he found a body. The Dallas County Medical Examiner was called to the scene, but the identity of the body is still pending.
“Due to the high probability that the deceased person recovered is SMU Officer McCullers, he was treated with the respect given to those who serve,” Officer Carlos Almeida wrote in a press release.
McCullers was off-duty at the time of the accident, working security at a construction site when the flooding hit his truck. He called 911, calmly telling dispatchers “It’s about to go in my car,” according to the recording that was later released. Heartbreaking security footage captured him desperately trying to push open the door of the truck against the rising tide.
McCullers was laid to rest in a service attended by hundreds at SMU. The father of six was a marine before joining the force at SMU in 2015.
