St. Louis officer mourned as ‘cool as a breeze,’ devoted to family

David Lee had a job at the Ford assembly plant in Hazelwood, like his father, but switched to police work when the plant closed down in 2006.

“It was like a light bulb went off,” said Lee’s wife, Tonya Lee. “He always wanted to be a police officer ever since he was a student at Pattonville and did a ride-along.”

Lee joined the St. Louis Police Department when he was 26 years old. Lee, 44, was fatally injured Sunday morning when assisting at an accident scene along Interstate 70.

The motorist who hit him, a Honduran national who was in the country illegally, has been charged with DWI.

Lee’s relatives gathered Monday at his home near Florissant to tell stories, share photos and comfort his wife.

They recalled him as a man deeply devoted to his family, who took his career as a police officer seriously. He was raised in a housing project in St. Louis, in the Carr Square neighborhood.

“He wanted to go back and give to his community because it’s familiar to him,” Tonya Lee said.

Lee, an 18-year veteran of the force, spent years on patrol in the Seventh and Sixth districts with his longtime police partner, Officer Christopher Edwards.

“On calls, I was fire, he was ice,” Edwards recalled of his friend, whom he called “D Lee.”

“D Lee was cool — cool as a breeze,” Edwards said.

People gravitated toward him, with his big smile and easygoing persona, relatives said.

“That was his niche,” Tonya said.

After years on patrol, Lee wanted to elevate his career and went through training for accident reconstruction and took an exam in Jefferson City before joining the police department’s Traffic Safety division.

He is survived by his wife, his 18-year-old daughter Saniya Lee, and his 23-year-old son Khalil Lee.

He and his wife met right after high school. He was quiet and reserved, and Tonya was considered loud with no filter.

“We are total opposites,” Tonya Lee said, laughing. “We balanced each other out. He told me not to ever change because I bring a side out of him.”

They were together for 26 years and married for 19 years.

Tiffany Bailey, one of Tonya’s closest friends who is considered family, said David and Tonya were an ideal couple.

“All that was missing was the white picket fence,” she said. “Just seeing them, they were always happy.”

David Lee loved sports and played basketball in high school. He loved to travel and to dress nicely. He loved family get-togethers.

“I knew he was special,” Tonya Lee said. “His eyes are pure. I could see down to his soul when I looked into his eyes. David is my best friend.”

The St. Louis Police Department, formed in 1861, has had more than 150 officers die in the line of duty. At least 47 of those officers died in a crash, including by what the department described as vehicular assault.

About 8:30 a.m. Sunday, Lee was responding to a single-car accident on I-70 near North Grand Avenue. The man charged in the deadly crash is Ramon Arnaldo Chavez-Rodriguez of St. Peters. He is charged with the DWI death of a law enforcement officer, a felony; exceeding the speed limit by 16-19 mph, a misdemeanor; and operating a vehicle without a license, a misdemeanor.

Tonya Lee said she knows the driver was in the country illegally, but she said she didn’t want to address that part and get involved in politics.

Investigators say Chavez-Rodriguez was driving at least 71 mph in a 2019 Kia Sorrento seconds before his vehicle spun out in the rainy weather and struck Lee. Lee was removing items from his trunk when Chavez-Rodriguez’s vehicle hit him, pinning him between the two vehicles and then throwing him several feet, police said.

A draw of Chavez-Rodriguez’s blood two hours after the accident showed he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.10, police said. The legal limit for operating a vehicle in Missouri is 0.08.

Lee had been in the Traffic Safety division for four years. Working traffic crashes is dangerous for officers, Edwards said.

“Getting shot is one thing. Domestic calls, getting beat is one thing. But those cars ... (that’s) a different story,” Edwards said. “Highways are so dangerous.”

Tonya Lee said officers should get more protection at traffic stops, with perhaps Missouri Department of Transportation crews or others to slow traffic down before the crash site.

The speeding motorist could have been stopped before he got to Lee, she said.

“If you do preventative measures, you would’ve stopped him way before, so he wouldn’t have gotten to my husband,” she said. The department is short-staffed, she added, and “they don’t have the police officers’ back.”

Lee had often advised his wife to avoid I-70 when she went downtown. He wanted her to take I-170, the Innerbelt, to Interstate 64 instead.

“Highway 70, period, is dangerous,” she said. “He wouldn’t even let me take that route.”

David Lee’s funeral will be Saturday, Oct. 5, at the Friendly Temple Church, 5515 Martin Luther King Drive. Visitation is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with funeral services to follow from 1 to 3 p.m. A repast is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. that day at the St. Louis Police Officers Association, at 3710 Hampton Avenue.

Editor's note: This article has been edited to correct the description of why the officer was on Interstate 70; he was assisting at the scene of an accident.