Timothy Abernethy was a kind, quiet leader with a good sense of humor who put his family first and treated everyone with respect, say some of those who knew him.

“He did everything with gusto,” his sister, Lyn Campbell, said Thursday. “He had enthusiasm for everything. He’d just go for it.”

“He worked hard in school,” said Phyllis Rainey of Clinton, one of Abernethy’s teachers at Lighthouse Christian School in Langley in the 1980s. “He knew it wasn’t a place to slough off. The little kids looked up to him.”

Abernethy, 43, who from the age of nine grew up on South Whidbey before joining the Navy and then the Houston (Texas) Police Department, died on duty Sunday, Dec. 7, while making a routine traffic stop in Houston.

After his car was pulled over in the parking lot of an apartment complex about 6:30 p.m., the 28-year-old male driver bolted and Abernethy gave chase.

Rounding the corner of a building, Abernethy was shot four times with a handgun. He died soon after at a nearby hospital.

The driver of the car was arrested an hour later, and was charged with capital murder, Houston police said.

Born in 1965 in Corpus Christi, Texas, Abernethy, whose father was a career Navy man, moved with his family to Freeland in 1974. His parents, Chuck and Peg Abernethy, now live in Coupeville.

The fifth of seven siblings, he attended South Whidbey schools before transferring to Lighthouse Christian School, at that time part of House of Prayer in Langley. Through the years he played soccer and basketball. He graduated in 1983.

Abernethy had two sisters and four brothers. His brother Christopher died of cancer in 2006 at the age of 36.

His sister Lyn Campbell, a home-school coordinator for a Christian school in Columbia Falls, Mont., said Abernethy contemplated attending community college after high school, but ended up following his father’s footsteps and joining the Navy.

He spent eight years as an electronics technician in the submarine service, before leaving the military life behind, she said.

“He loved it, he missed it so much,” Campbell said, adding that her brother gave up the Navy to be more available to his two young children. “He was very devoted to his family,” she said.

Abernethy and his wife, Stephanie, a Houston native, met while both were stationed in Florida with the Navy, Campbell said. They were married for nearly 22 years.

Their daughter, Olivia, 21, recently graduated from Texas A&M University in College Station. Their son, Timothy Jr., 20, joined the Navy this past summer and was in training for the military police, Campbell said.

Abernethy had been with the Houston Police Department for 11 years at the time of his death.

While with the department, he was a member of the dive team, the gang task force and the bike patrol, and was nearing completion of training for the elite bomb squad.

“He was really looking forward to that,” Campbell said. “He liked a variety of challenges.

“And he liked to do things just so,” she added. “I think that’s why he liked the military.”

While with the Houston police, he received two life-saving awards, one for pulling a suspect from a burning car, the other for rescuing a young girl who had become stuck in an electronic gate at a storage facility, Campbell said.

Local news reports said more than 4,000 people attended Abernethy’s funeral at a Baptist church in Houston on Friday, Dec. 12. The service included a flyover by police helicopters and a 21-gun salute.

Police Sgt. Leo Boutte, his supervisor, spoke at the service, saying that Abernethy was a hard worker and dedicated to his job.

“He was out there working a hot-spot location, which is a place where there were crime problems,” Boutte said. “The people lost someone who was out there fighting for them.

“His family was his number-one thing,” Boutte continued. “He was always talking about his family.

“He was a man his colleagues said you wanted to follow because you always knew Tim Abernethy would steer you in the right direction,” he added.

Campbell said her brother’s family is receiving support from family and the Houston Police Department.

“We’re all just very proud of what he did for his wife and family, and of his service as a police officer,” she said. “He cared about people.”