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Died – 6/28/21
Handler – Sgt. Kieran McMorrow
Sussex County NJ Sheriff’s Office Grieves For K-9 ‘Kilo’
A crime-fighting K-9 is being remembered in Sussex County, after “Kilo,” a member of the Sussex County Sheriff’s Office, died on Monday. Sussex County Sheriff Michael Strada called Kilo “one of the most consistently prolific narcotics-detection canines in the history of the Sussex County Sheriff’s Office,” for his extensive drug-seizing career and helping to find over $60,000 in cash at crime scenes that he worked at. While Kilo’s career was abbreviated because of an injury in January 2018 and he retired, living out the remainder of his days at the home of Sgt. Kieran McMorrow and with his family, Strada said Kilo “didn’t waste a single minute” of his career. “Often, it doesn’t require an extended period of time to make an awfully big difference, Kilo was proof of that,” Strada said Tuesday. Kilo was partnered up in 2014 with McMorrow, then a detective, the two training together first; and then graduating from basic patrol and scent-detection courses. Before beginning his career in law enforcement, K-9 Kilo – a German Shepherd – arrived in the United States when he was young pup, sometime after his birth in Hungary on Sept. 28, 2012. Strada said the Sheriff’s Office acquired Kilo from a canine vendor before he was paired off with McMorrow, buying him with money from Sussex County’s Asset Forfeiture Fund. The fund comes from cash seized in narcotics investigations. During his career, Kilo responded to 170 calls. Among them were wanted person searches, burglaries, helping to look for missing kids, recovering evidence at crime scenes and more. From 2015 to 2017, Strada said Kilo helped to take part in seizures of “substantial amounts of illegal drugs and currency.”
Among Kilo’s major career accolades:
• He sniffed out 72 bags of cocaine with the Hopatcong Police Department, which led to 13 drug arrests in May 2015.
• At a motor vehicle stop in Newton, he helped to find five heroin bricks in August 2016.
• In Wantage, Kilo and McMorrow worked with the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office in September 2016 to seize $29,000 in cash, plus uncover over 5,200 bags of heroin, 450 grams of cocaine, 4 grams of methamphetamine, 18 grams of crack cocaine, 64 grams of morphine, 43 grams of oxycodone, as well as several other drugs.
• Kilo and the Prosecutor’s Office met up again in April 2017 to recover more than $10,000, an illegal handgun, 2 kilograms of cocaine and help with 20 arrests in Vernon Township and New York.
• In another Vernon incident in May 2017, Kilo gave a hand during a traffic stop, where police uncovered over $21,000 and 2.75 ounces of cocaine.
Strada and the Sheriff’s Office gave their sympathies to McMorrow and his family in a special Facebook Post tribute. “He will be missed immensely,” Strada said.
