‘Ultimate Sacrifice’: SC law enforcement lays to rest K-9 killed in action

On Sept. 28, Jennifer Hunton said a prayer. Her husband, Richard Hunton III, a SLED K-9 handler, was preparing to join a manhunt for a suspect who had already shot a passerby and a sheriff’s deputy. With Richard was his K-9, the 3-year-old Belgian Malinois mix, Rico, who had served with SLED since 2022.

“I was saying, ‘Please God, save Richard. Protect him. Protect everyone he’s with,” Jennifer remembered.

Rico was the answer to her prayer.

Sent into a house on John’s Island to seek out the suspect, Rico was shot and killed by Ernest Robert Burbage III, who had been hiding in ambush, armed with a rifle. Burbage was shot and killed after he fled out of a back window after shooting Rico.

“Without any question, he saved the lives of agents and deputies,” said Mark Keel, chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. “Rico will be remembered into eternity.”

On Wednesday morning, more than 400 people assembled at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy for an event that had no precedent in living memory as Rico was given a memorial befitting a hero.

On Broad River Road, American flags hung suspended from ladder trucks provided by the Lexington and Columbia-Richland fire departments. In an extraordinary ceremony, an urn containing Rico’s cremated remains were carried in a procession, led by a bagpiper and flanked by South Carolina Highway Patrol troopers in full dress uniform.

In his opening remarks, the normally stoic Chief Keel appeared choked up as he honored Rico’s “ultimate sacrifice” and paid tribute to the danger that SLED’s K-9s, “amazing animals,” experience everyday.

Keel’s remarks were followed by prayers from a law enforcement chaplain and prepared remarks from the Hunton family and other SLED special agents.

In attendance were law enforcement officers from all across the South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster — a dog owner — and his wife, First Lady Peggy McMaster.

While the ceremony may have been the first of its kind, McMaster said it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the state of South Carolina would pay tribute to a dog’s heroism.

“We love our dogs,” McMaster said.

Richard Hunton III was presented folded American and South Carolina flags by McMaster and Keel.

Following a rifle salute, Rico’s family processed to their cars, carrying his ashes, flanked by more than 100 law enforcement K-9 handlers and their dogs. The mournful howls of some hounds nearly drowned out the bagpiper, who played Danny Boy to accompany Rico on one final journey home, where his remains will stay with the Huntons.

It was the memorial befitting of SLED K-9 who died upholding the working dog’s oath: To lay down his life and expect nothing but love in return.

But the ceremony was also a recognition of the extraordinary family that Rico had become a part of. His handler, Richard, had “grown up at SLED,” Keel said. Richard’s father, Maj. Richard Hunton, oversees homeland security at SLED. Hunton’s wife, Jessica, is also a SLED special agent with the crime scene department.

“This is a family dedicated to SLED, the service to this state and its citizens,” Keel said. “He (Rico) preserved that family. He saved that family.”

Rico was very much a part of that family. He lived with the Huntons, and Jennifer, who described herself as Rico’s mom, remembered the first picture she saw of him. He looked like a strange “dinosaur” perched on top of a table away from a group of other dogs.

He grew to be more than 90 pounds, and appeared an intimidating juggernaut of dark fur and teeth with a remarkably big and ferocious-looking head. One suspect fleeing a building leaped in the air and threw himself on the ground in surrender just on hearing Rico’s bark, Richard remembered.

But his family remembered him as a goofy, lovable companion. He was hardheaded, high maintenance, and so demanding of affection that he would nearly knock tables over in order to be petted.

“He never gave me a reason not to trust him,” Jennifer said. Richard had a previous K-9 that had not worked out, but his bond with Rico was unshakable. “Rico was his favorite person,” Jennifer said.

At his core, though, Rico was a working dog. He was very much a member of the elite brethren of SLED’s SWAT team, and his willingness and obedience embodied the elite unit’s motto, which is drawn from the Bible: “Here I am, send me.”

“It was always comforting to know that he had our back. I look back in my memory and I realize that I was so relieved whenever Rico was with us on SWAT calls or staring down a violent fugitive, ready to put himself in harm’s way,” said SLED Lt. Keith Thrower. “There was never any doubt that Rico would not have done his job.”

Rico wanted to be in the action, and was only unhappy when he saw others doing work without him, Richard said. He did everything asked of him, whether it was rappelling from a building, scrambling through a crawl space or riding in a helicopter.

Richard remembered that in the hours leading up to his death, Rico eagerly joined the search for Burbage, leaping into an armored personnel carrier. Lying in the back of the vehicle, he gladly accepted pets from nervous law enforcement officers, who were sent to clear houses on Johns Island, 30 hours into the search.

Looking back, Richard said he thinks now about the prayers he offered to God for protection and guidance that afternoon during the tense manhunt. Now he says he knows there was an answer.

“God asked ‘who would go first?’” Richard said. “And in his big ol’ head, Rico said, ‘Here I am, send me.’”