WASHINGTON – A Texas police officer attended the graduation of a teen who had lost his parents in a motorcycle crash just days earlier.
Lt. Eric Ellison gave Kazzie Portie, 18, of Orange, Texas, the terrible news of his parents’ May 24 death. Portie is the youngest of five children and he was the only one home when Ellison knocked on the door, Ellison says in an interview with CNN.
Ellison wanted to show support for Portie, who was preparing to graduate from high school.
“This really hit home for me,” Ellison tells CNN. His own daughter was also set to graduate from a neighboring school.
An image posted on Portie’s high school’s Instagram account shows the pair hugging on stage during the gradation ceremony.
“I walked up on the stage he looked at me and I looked at him and we both cried and that’s OK,” Ellison tells KBMT, a station in Southeast Texas. “I told him ‘you’re going to walk and your folks are going to have a front row seat and I’m going to be there’.”
Portie says he was heartbroken that his parents wouldn’t be able to attend the ceremony – they too were looking forward to that proud moment, he says.
Ellison was among a large group there to cheer him on as he collected his diploma, he tells CNN.
News of the teen and officer’s story has spread far and wide and strangers have reached out to Portie to let him know how much it touched them, he says.
“Hearing that has really filled my heart with joy,” the teen says.
See the CNN interview below.
