The Los Angeles Police Department will hold a closed-casket visitation starting at noon Monday for SWAT Officer Robert J. Cottle, a Marine reservist killed in a roadside bombing in southern Afghanistan.
The viewing for the 45-year-old Yorba Linda resident, who was a sergeant major in the Marines, will be held in downtown L.A. at police headquarters on First Street.
Cottle and Lance Cpl. Rick Centanni, 19, also from Yorba Linda, were traveling with other Marines in the Marja region of Afghanistan last month when their armored vehicle struck an improvised explosive device, killing the two men and seriously wounding two others.
Cottle and Centanni, who became friends during their deployment, were part of the 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, based at Camp Pendleton in northern San Diego County.
Cottle began working for the LAPD in 1990 and joined SWAT six years later. He is the first active LAPD officer to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
His private memorial service will be held Tuesday at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels in downtown Los Angeles.
Cottle leaves behind a wife, Emily, a naval officer stationed in Hawaii, and a 9-month-old daughter. He was a veteran of two tours in Iraq and will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
— Richard Winton
Photo: Undated photo of Sgt. Maj. Robert J. Cottle , 45, a member of the Los Angeles Police Department’s elite SWAT unit, who also served as a U.S. Marine and was killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb. Credit: LAPD