A 25th anniversary remembrance ceremony will be held Thursday for slain Manhattan Beach Police Department Officer Martin Ganz.

The ceremony will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Joslyn Community Center, 1601 N. Valley Drive. The ceremony is open to the public. The center is located in Live Oak Park, the site of the Martin Ganz Memorial.

The stretch of the San Diego (405) Freeway between Hawthorne Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue is named the Martin L. Ganz Memorial Highway in his memory. Ganz was a Manhattan Beach Police Department officer for five years after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps.

According to information provided by the city of Manhattan Beach, Ganz, who normally worked as a motorcycle traffic officer, was serving on a holiday DUI patrol when he observed a motorist commit a traffic violation around 11 p.m. on Dec. 27, 1993, and pulled the vehicle over in the Manhattan Village Mall.

When Ganz walked towards the car, the driver, later identified as Roger Hoan Brady, exited and shot Ganz multiple times.

After killing Ganz, Brady returned to his vehicle and fled. Unbeknownst to Ganz, Brady was on his way to rob a Ralphs market.

Brady would be arrested after killing another victim in Oregon. After being convicted of the Oregon murder, he was convicted of Ganz’s murder in 1998 and sentenced to death in 1999. He remains on death row in San Quentin State Prison.

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