Widow of Police Officer Andrew Harper issues touching tribute on his birthday
The officer, who was killed in 2019, would have been 30 today
The widow of Thames Valley Police officer Andrew Harper has said she never expected to be spending his 30th birthday without him.
Lissie Harper is paying tribute to him today - over a year and a half after he was killed, just four weeks after their wedding.
PC Harper was caught in a strap attached to the back of a car and dragged to his death down a winding country road as three men fled the scene of a quad bike theft in Berkshire on the night of August 15 2019.
19-year-old Henry Long was sentenced in July 2020 to 16 years in prison and 18-year-olds Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers were handed 13 years in custody over PC Harper's manslaughter.
Long – the leader of the group – admitted manslaughter, while passengers Cole and Bowers were convicted of manslaughter after a trial at the Old Bailey.
All three were cleared of murder by the jury, which deliberated for more than 12 hours.
In a tribute today, Lissie Harper said she will mark what would have been her late husband's milestone privately, going for a quiet walk in one of their favourite places with a flask of tea and some flowers, rather than taking him away to "spoil'' him as she would have otherwise wanted.
She said his death still felt "surreal".
And she said she will continue to wear her wedding ring, despite the emotional toil of having to explain her "situation" to strangers.
Speaking from her parents home in Oxfordshire, she said: "His 30th birthday would have been something we would have celebrated, and it's still very surreal to me that we're not, and he's not here.
"Everything is different now and that highlights the cruelness of it - he's not going to have another birthday.
"Thirty is such a big one that you do make an effort to spoil them.
"That's what we would have been doing. It would have been a really special day, so it's very bitter to have to spend that without him.
"I would have taken him away, done something special.''
She added: "He was never the sort (to say), 'Oh great, I'm getting older'.
"He loved to live - that's why it's so heart-breaking, because of all the people for it to happen to... it's the cruellest.''
Last week, it was announced Mrs Harper will tell her story and speak about the profound effect her husband’s killing has had on her life in a new documentary for ITV, with Sir Trevor McDonald.
The one-off film has the working title The Killing of Pc Harper: A Wife’s Story.
Mrs Harper will share her memories of the relationship she shared with her husband, her refusal to be a victim and her current campaign for the introduction of Harper’s Law, which proposes a life sentence for anyone guilty of killing an emergency worker while committing a crime.