Hundreds of people gathered Wednesday at a tearful ceremony to pay their respects for a Vicksburg paramedic killed in a New Year’s Day crash in Delhi, La.
The crowd, including friends, family and more than 100 firefighters and paramedics from agencies across Mississippi and Louisiana, remembered Vicksburg Fire Department Lt. Drue Randolph as a kind, compassionate man who always put others’ safety above his own.
“People don’t realize how passionate Drue was,” his brother David Randolph said. “If he thought there was in injustice in the world, he was right there to fight it.”

Raldoph’s casket was carried by Vicksburg firefighters, and the Mississippi Fire Academy Honor Guard as other firefighters and medics flanked the procession out of Immanuel Baptist Church on U.S. 61 South. As the motorcade made it’s way to Greenlawn Gardens on U.S. 80, fire trucks and other emergency vehicles blocked intersections as people paused to salute the late firefighter and paramedic.
“He would have been amazed today. It was beautiful,” his sister Shari Stanfill said.
Vicksburg Fire Chief Charles Atkins choked up while reading a eulogy at the cemetery before asking for the longstanding tradition of having dispatchers ring a final alarm for a fallen comrade.
“Day in and day out, firefighters all over the world place themselves in harm’s way to protect the lives and property of their fellow man,” Atkins said before asking Warren County dispatchers via radio to sound a final bell.
After a short silence, a woman’s voice answered back over the emergency radio.
“Vicksburg lieutenant firefighter paramedic Dru Randolph has answered his final alarm,” she said before the alarm rang.
Friends and family members broke down in tears, audibly gasping as the alarm sounded.
Randolph spent 25 years with Vicksburg Fire Department and was planning to retire Jan. 15. In his retirement, he was planning to work fulltime at Northeast Louisiana Ambulance, said Angie Tarver, a supervisor with the ambulance service.
“He was like a brother. We loved him. There was no way not to love him,” Tarver said.
Saving lives and helping others was a passion of Randolph’s his fellow firefighters and paramedics said. He was always prepared, Atkins said.

“Drue was also prepared one day in 2005 when the call came out that we had two victims drowning in a little river of water,” Atkins said.
Randolph was a member of the VFD dive team, and was preparing to search for bodies, when he arrived, but he was able to swim to the drowning victims and rescue them, Atkins said.
“If you don’t think your actions have meaning, ask those two people Drue saved that day if his life didn’t mean anything to them,” Atkins said.
Randolph is also survived by his parents his wife, Terry Parker Randolph of Crowville; his two sons, Zach and Mack Randolph of Flowood, among others.
Louisiana State Police spokesman Trooper Michael Reichardt said Randolph was killed when the Ford Focus he was driving and a Chevrolet pickup driven by a 16-year-old from Winnsboro, La., collided on Louisiana 17 about four miles south of Delhi.
The teen was not identified.