Roll of Honor
Incident
Deputy Sheriff John Burkett was killed in a head-on collision on I-81 near mile marker 5 in Franklin County, Pennsylvania.
He and another deputy were extraditing a prisoner from Pennsylvania back to West Virginia when the crash occurred. The car which struck the patrol car had entered the highway by driving up an exit ramp. On the exit ramp, the vehicle passed a Pennsylvania State Police trooper who immediately turned around in an attempt to stop it. The vehicle then struck the patrol car that Deputy Burkett was riding in.
Deputy Burkett, who was in the passenger seat and wearing a seatbelt, succumbed to his injuries at the scene. The other deputy, the prisoner, and the driver who caused the crash were all injured.
In 2014 a section of West Virginia Route 901 was renamed the Deputy John L. Burkett III Memorial Highway in his memory.
In Our Keeping
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BO-US-WV-BA181D9E- Stewardship
- Maintained by NeuraWeb Global Inc.
- Added to badge.nw
- April 2, 2026
- Last updated
- July 23, 2026
Honored here by 1 sentinel - 1 tribute.
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Tributes
You barely got started.
Deputy Sheriff Burkett gave the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office 1 year.
Thank you for your service to the Martinsburg community. Gone but never to be forgotten.
Rest easy, Deputy Sheriff Burkett.
— S. Vincent Anthony, U.S. Army 1985-1993
Agency
Service Record
Incident Details
Deputy Sheriff John Lewis Burkett, III is one of 10,088 officers lost to accidents in the line of duty across the full record of this memorial — 31% of all 32,508 officers honored here.
In WV, 54 of 232 officers were lost to accidents in the line of duty — 23.3% of this state's fallen. That is 7.7 percentage points below the national rate of 31%.
National Cause Distribution
How Accident compares to all causes of officer death in the memorial record. John Lewis Burkett, III's cause is highlighted.
How John Lewis Burkett, III Compares
When Accident Deaths Occur
Monthly distribution of Accident deaths across the full memorial record. John Lewis Burkett, III is highlighted in Jan.