LAKE ARROWHEAD–Jerimiah MacKay, who was gunned down by renegade former LAPD officer Christopher Dormer during his February rampage, has been honored, along with his late grandmother, by the dedication of a park in the San Bernardino Mountains bearing the family name.
MacKay Park is the first park to be dedicated in the Lake Arrowhead community. It is located above Papoose Lake off Highway 173.
On July 13, dignitaries representing the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, Cal Fire, the county Fire Department, the U.S. Forestry Service, the Lake Arrowhead Dam Commission and the Arrowhead Lake Association, dedicated the park in the memory of Audrey MacKay and Jeremiah MacKay with scores of community members in attendance.
Jerimiah MacKay was raised in the San Bernardino Mountains, having spent his childhood in Lake Arrowhead. He had achieved the rank of detective when he and another sheriff’s deputy, Alex Collins, encountered Dorner near Barton Flats on February ??. Both were shot multiple times by Dorner. Collins survived.
Jerimiah MacKay’s grandmother, Audrey, was a leading member of the Lake Arrowhead community and was a founding member and the first chairperson of the Lake Arrowhead Dam Commission, which was started following the Sylmar earthquake of 1971. The commission’s charter was to monitor and maintain the integrity of the dam. Technical evaluation of the dam determined that the original dam, now a section of Highway 173, was seismically unsound. The dam commission, led by Audrey MacKay, undertook to build a second dam, creating Papoose Lake in so doing. .
MacKay Park, which was fashioned out of a piece of ground formerly known as “the flats,” entails a toddlers’ playground, a picnic area, walking paths and a viewing deck offering views of both Papoose Lake and the Lake Arrowhead marina.