OPP officer killed yesterday lived in Tottenham as a youth

Posted March 9, 2010

Huron OPP officer Vu Pham, killed yesterday in a gun battle northwest of London on a rural road, lived in Tottenham as a teenager, the adopted son of Dan and Terry Thompson. Dan was a pastor of Hillside Community Church in Tottenham.

Constable Pham, a 15-year-veteran of the OPP, was shot in the head and died in hospital Monday morning. The suspect is a 70-year-old man from Burk's Falls, listed in criticial condition in hospital.

Born in Vietnam, Pham arrived in Canada as a refugee when the Thompsons adopted him. They lived on The Boulevard in Tottenham during the late 1980s, and he attended Banting Memorial High School, but moved before graduating.

He joined the OPP in 1995.

In an email to Free Press Online, Brett McGuinness noted that he remembered Pham and they had worked together at Tottenham Dairy Queen during that time.

"As the papers have said, he truly was a decent, stand-up guy," wrote McGuinness. "He's one of those guys that I haven't seen in nearly 20 years but had hoped to run into again some day."

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