Sean Renfro hailed by black family as ‘guardian angel’ after he died helping them

DENVER — It didn’t matter to Chauncey and Kenneth Tate that Sgt. Sean Renfro was white, just like it didn’t matter to him that they weren’t.

What matters is that Jefferson County Sheriff’s Sgt. Renfro, 40, gave his life Saturday to help rescue the Tate siblings and Chauncey’s 9-month-old son Angus after their SUV slid into the side of a mountain during a Colorado snowstorm.

The juxtaposition of Sgt. Renfro’s death and national news coverage depicting officers as threats to the black community wasn’t lost on the Tates’ father, Derwood Tate, pastor of the Upper Room Church in Lakewood, Colorado.

“There’s been a lot of bad publicity lately,” Mr. Tate told The Washington Times. “Sgt. Renfro was Caucasian and we’re African-Americans, but he died protecting my kids.”

Mr. Tate is black and his wife, Nancy Tate, is Hispanic. Their children, one of whom is adopted, are both black and Hispanic.

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