‘I’ve got to go help.’ South MS remembers slain officer as kind-hearted ‘warrior’
Police Lt. Mike Boutte never shooed away a homeless person encountered while on duty. Instead, his friends say, he asked how he could help.
Boutte, killed Monday in the line of duty, never thought about retiring even though he could have at 57 years old. He enjoyed his job too much, said his friend Kelly Stephens.
Boutte was a helper. He loved meeting and talking to people.
“He was the nicest guy on the face of the earth,” Stephens said. She and her husband met Boutte after he went to work in Diamondhead for the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office in 2016.
His end of watch came while he was responding Monday afternoon to a report of an attempted suicide. As usual, Stephens heard through the law enforcement community, Boutte stepped out of his vehicle with a smile on his face.
He was shot and died before given the chance to help.
Mike Boutte remembered as ‘warrior’ with kind heart
Boutte was “a warrior” who approached his job with compassion, said Dustin Moeller, assistant chief of the Picayune Police Department. Boutte was with the department for just over four years, until March 2016. Boutte and Moeller worked the streets together, Moeller said.
Boutte started out as patrolman and rose to shift sergeant. He had served in the Air Force and was a veteran of Operation Desert Storm, according to the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office.
“If I heard on the radio that Mike Boutte was en route to me to back me up, I always knew things would be OK,” Moeller said. “He was a warrior. He did things the right way and with care.”
But the thing everyone will remember about Boutte, Moeller said, was his smile.
“He always had a smile on his face,” Moeller said. “No matter how bad it got, he continued to smile. He would come off a call where things were bad, the average officer would be upset, frustrated. You’d say, ‘Mike are you OK?’
“He always had the same response: ‘It’s all good, babe.’ ”
Boutte became part of the communities he served. In 2016, he went to work in Diamondhead for the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office.
Kelly Stephens met him because he drove by her house and rolled down the window to inquire about a race car he had seen there. Boutte wound up becoming close friends with her and her husband, who shared the officer’s passion for drag racing.
He hung out often at the house and checked on Kelly Stephens at her shop, Gabo’s Boutique and Gifts. He always wanted to know if she needed anything.
If a call came in and he had to respond, he never appeared put out. Instead, he always said the same thing: “I’ve got to go help these people.”
He handed out cards with his telephone number on them and told residents not to hesitate to call on him. He was even nice to the people whom he had to arrest, Stephens said.
Slain officer gave to those in need
Boutte, who lived with his wife in Carriere, was frugal with his money. He always brought his lunch to work, Moeller said. The other officers used to pick on him when they saw what he was eating. It appeared he just opened his refrigerator, mixed the ingredients he found there and put them all in one pot.
With the money he saved, he helped others. He ran across people who didn’t have enough to eat or wear. He bought them shoes or stopped by McDonald’s, where he would load up and take meals to people’s houses.
“The thing about him was, it was just his personality,” Moeller said. “He didn’t worry about himself. It was never a second thought. It was just what he did.”
Boutte always made a good impression on people.
Kyle Freeman, who used to live in Diamondhead, said his son Carter, then 4 years old, was making cards one day. Carter said he wanted to give them to police officers for Christmas. The Freemans delivered the cards to Boutte, who knelt to accept them from the shy child.
“It was really a nice moment,” said Freeman, who immediately thought back to that memory when he found out Boutte had been killed.
“He was very open just to stop and talk to people,” Freeman said. “He wanted to be a part of the community. He wasn’t there just to do a job.”
Boutte talked others out of suicide
Diamondhead firefighter Taylor Bourgeois was in the procession Tuesday that escorted Boutte’s body along U.S. 90 to Main Street in Bay St. Louis for delivery to Edmond Fahey Funeral Home.
Bourgeois, who served in the Marines, said Boutte was a mentor to him. They responded together on many emergency calls. He said Boutte always returned to visit people who had been in distress and make sure they were doing OK.
“He worked harder than anyone else I’ve known to check on people,” Bourgeois said.
Boutte wanted to leave residents with a good impression of law enforcement officers. The two friend went on more than one suicide call together.
One man, in particular, Bourgeois recalls because the man was a veteran. If he had not known better, Bourgeois would have thought the man and Boutte had known one another for years. The three of them, all having served in different branches of the service, talked about the military.
After Boutte talked with him, the man agreed to seek help, Bourgeois said.
Although he never got the chance Monday, Boutte had talked quite a few suicidal individuals into getting help, Bourgeois said.
Bourgeois heard his friend’s badge number called out Monday on a police scanner. “Hancock 53” was down.
“I said, ‘No, it’s not,’ ” he said. “There’s no way.”
This story was originally published February 2, 2021 at 3:24 PM.
