VANCOUVER, Wash. (KOIN) — A security guard patrolling the parking lot of the Columbia Business Center in Vancouver was killed around midnight Sunday night in what is being called a homicide.
Benjamin Lyons, 83, had worked for Knighthawk Protection for a little more than a year. He was found on the ground around midnight by a supervisor who came to check on him.
He was making his usual rounds patrolling the Dill’s Star Route Trucking Company. The company’s owner told KOIN 6 News they’re a subcontractor for the US Postal Service and their trucks go out around-the-clock.
The owner of the trucking company told KOIN 6 News they do not have security cameras or much lighting in the lot, but police are checking nearby businesses to see if they have any security video. The owner also thinks Lyons may have encountered someone who didn’t belong on the lot.
Rusty Rice, who owns Knighthawk Protection, said Lyon’s death is “unbelievable. We’ve been around 20 years and it hasn’t happened.”
Like most of their guards, he was not carrying a gun while working his usual assignment on an overnight shift.
Rice told KOIN 6 News another member of Knighthawk Protection checked on him at 11:30 p.m. and all was well. “Then we checked at 12 o’clock, another, by chance, a supervisor, was coming by to check and make sure he was OK, and that’s when we found him.”
His co-workers are having a hard time with his death, Rice said. “He was so well respected by everybody. He was an older guy, a father figure to some of the younger people.”
Lyon’s cause of death was determined to be from ‘multiple sharp and blunt force injuries,’ the medical examiner’s office said.
The Vancouver Major Crime Unit is investigating. There is no suspect at this time.
KOIN 6 News will have more information as it develops.
