Kenmare policeman Julius Alexander “Sander” Nielsen was shot and killed on Sept. 18, 1921, while attempting to arrest a robbery suspect in the rear of the Park Hotel, which was located on Division Street of the downtown square. Officer Nielsen’s killing was the fifth of five line-of-duty deaths in Ward County, all of which occurred between 1918 and 1921.

Ward County Sheriff Robert Roed, who spoke at the ceremony in the downtown square, noted that Nielsen, who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1870, didn’t have to work night patrol for the city of Kenmare. Nielsen had farmed 20 years before adding the job of policeman.

“He did it for the sense of community. He did it for the same sense most law enforcement officers are in this business right now,” he said, “To serve your community and to protect your community.”

Roed said that volunteerism lives on in first responders and military members today.

Jill Schramm/MDN Attending the remembrance ceremony for Julius Nielsen in Kenmare Saturday are two great-granddaughters of Nielsen with their mother, Margaret Nelson. At left is Toni Hennenfent and at right is Lori Mosser, both Minot. The family name had been changed from Nielsen to Nelson in years past.

“So that’s why we are here — to honor him and to remember that the job has not changed, even though the times have changed over the last 100 years,” he said. “The dangers are still there. The sacrifices are still there.”

Nielsen was the finest grain of man, whom many people thought was too good-natured to be a policeman, according to a history researched by Sgt. Curt Olson, formerly with the Kenmare Police Department and now with the McLean County Sheriff’s Office.

Olson described the events of the Sunday when Nielsen, a husband and father of seven, was shot and killed during a 3 a.m. attempt to arrest two men accused of robbing a poker game earlier that evening.

Nielsen, 51, was at the bottom of an outdoor hotel staircase when a 24-year-old robbery suspect leaving the hotel pulled out a 45-caliber six-shooter, fired and ordered the officer to “stick them up,” according to a witness at the time. Nielsen had been mortally wounded but the suspect stood over him and continued shooting. Shot three times, Nielsen died while being carried to an automobile by others who came to his rescue. Chief of Police Jack Kinser shot the murder suspect in the leg as he fled.

The investigation led officers to a farm east of Kenmare, where they located the suspect. A conspirator in the robbery also was arrested, and a 45-caliber weapon was located under his mattress in the Park Hotel. The money, $144, was located in his pillow.

The suspects had been drinking canned heat, typically used by campers to prepare their meals but abused as a method to get a chemical high. The shooter also was implicated in the shooting of a state prohibition agent and a Renville County deputy sheriff weeks earlier. He also was found to have escaped from an Iowa prison, where he had been serving a life sentence for murdering a deputy sheriff in a jail escape in November of 1919.

The suspect was returned to Iowa to serve out his life sentence and wasn’t prosecuted in North Dakota, even though the state Attorney General objected to his transfer to Iowa authorities.

“Law enforcement was especially a violent time back in that era,” Olson said. “From 1910 to 1929, 17 officers were killed in North Dakota. That 20-year period accounts for 29% of all the line-of-duty deaths in the state of North Dakota.”

Although statistically police officer deaths have dropped, the danger remains, said Aaron Moss, president of the Souris Valley Region Lodge #7 of the North Dakota Fraternal Order of Police and member of the Minot Police Department. Lower numbers are influenced by advances in trauma care and improved training and equipment for officers, he said.

“As communities inevitably move on from such tragedy, we owe it to our peace officers lost, and even more importantly to their survivors and descendants, to recognize and acknowledge their loss isn’t merely a number but a loss of a piece of humanity,” Moss said.

Individual pieces of framed artwork recognizing Nielsen were presented to his descendants. Present were Margaret Nelson, wife of Julius’ grandson, Dennis, who passed away five years ago, and great-granddaughters Toni Hennenfent and Lori Mosser of Minot. The Nielsen name had been changed to Nelson over the years.

A tribute at the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery near Kenmare followed the ceremony.