Shenandoah High School shows its support for Elwood community
MIDDLETOWN, Ind. (WISH) — The high school football season kicks off with a cause in one Indiana community.
When fans, players, coaches, and cheerleaders from Middletown’s Shenandoah High School visit Elwood Junior-Senior High School for a Friday night matchup, they will also be showing their support for the Elwood community as it mourns the loss of police officer Noah Shahnavaz.
“All of our cheerleaders and a lot of our fans and coaches are gonna be dressed in shirts that we sold to raise money for Officer Noah and his family,” Jessica Armstrong, Shenandoah’s varsity cheer coach, said Friday on Daybreak. “We also will be having a student section. They’re gonna be all dressed in blue or our police shirts and they will have blue thin blue line flags to wave.”
The school will also present Officer Shahnavaz’s family with a check for over $3,000, Armstrong says. The money was collected from sales of a special T-shirt and other various donations.
Armstrong says her own close ties to law enforcement inspired her to take action.
“My son is a sophomore on the football team. My husband has been an officer at Anderson Police Department for 15 years and, since this happened in the county where he’s a police officer, it hit really close to home for us. We just wanted to reach out to the family and let them know that they are supported and that we care about our police officers in our community.”
Armstrong says she also wanted to show support for police at home and in Elwood.
“Police don’t get a lot of good press a lot of the time. So we want to let them know that we support them and that other communities need to support their officers. Something tragic happened in this community in Elwood. So, we wanted to bring awareness that we are a school that cares and we’re just thankful that we have officers that protect us every day.”
Shahnavaz, 24, was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Madison County on July 31. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the case of Carl Roy Webb Boards II, the man charged with Shahnavaz’s murder.