Before he was appointed chief deputy of the Calloway County Sheriff’s Office in Kentucky, Jody Cash was a highly decorated Kentucky state trooper. He’s pictured here in an undated photo from when he was a trooper, saluting while his son, Jackson, plays taps to support a National Police Week peace officer memorial ceremony. Calloway County Sheriff’s Office photo.
At the Kentucky funeral of Jody Cash, the slain chief deputy of the Calloway County Sheriff’s Office, Jody Adair urged mourners to laugh a little.
“We would do him a great disservice today if we were here and we didn’t laugh,” Adair said at the Saturday, May 21, service on the Murray State University campus. “Jody would be disappointed, for if you knew him, he was always going to make you laugh — whether it was funny or not.”
Adair remembered the 44-year-old lawman as a jokester who had “a thousand best friends.”
Cash died May 16 at Marshall County Hospital from gunshot wounds sustained at the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office hours earlier. Cash was escorting a prisoner when he was shot, and law enforcement officers then killed the inmate, investigators said.
Authorities continue to decline to name the prisoner he was escorting, and Cash’s death remains a mystery for the Kentucky State Police to solve.
Although he had served only 18 months at the sheriff’s office, Cash had gathered more than two decades of law enforcement experience before he died, including eight years with the Kentucky State Police, six years as the assistant chief of the Murray State University Police Department, and another six years at the Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office.
His commendations included a Kentucky State Police Citation for Bravery to mark his courageous commitment to duty.
“He never knew what it meant not to be a servant of the people,” Adair told mourners. “He didn’t care how big or small the task was in front of him. He served.”
A procession Saturday to honor the fallen Cash snaked from the CFSB Center on the university’s campus to the Murray City Cemetery.
Cash was born on Oct. 31, 1977, in Princeton, Kentucky, to Harold Wayne Cash and Teresa Lane Cash.
He is survived by his parents; his wife, Michelle (née Moore); his son, Jackson; his stepdaughter, Madyson Martin; and his sister, Kelly Byrd.
During the funeral service, Mayfield Police Chief Nathan Kent turned to Cash’s children to laud their father for teaching them to be genuine, because “not everybody is.”
“Your dad is a man of character, and we should all be so lucky to have that said about us,” Kent said.
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Noelle is a former staff writer for Coffee or Die through a fellowship from Military Veterans in Journalism. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and interned with the US Army Cadet Command. Noelle also worked as a civilian journalist covering several units, including the 75th Ranger Regiment on Fort Benning, before she joined the military as a public affairs specialist.
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