Hundreds pay respects to local Marine who died during training
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DENHAM SPRINGS - Under a starlit sky, people gathered to pay their respects to a Marine as his body passed in a motorcade in front of the highway they lined Friday night.
Bryan Michael Lauw, 21, died last week in a training accident at Camp Pendleton in California. He was a corporal in the Marine Corps.
Holding flags, flashlights and some fighting tears, they gathered along Range Avenue. They waited for a while Friday. As the sunset turned to twilight, the flashing lights of the motorcade appeared.
As it drove under a flag draped across the highway by fire trucks, people stood in silence.
"As a parent, I just can't image losing my child. I really appreciate what he did for our country," a woman said in tears.
"It hurts," a man said.
Lauw enlisted in 2012 after graduating from Live Oak High School. He'd been deployed to Central and South America and Jordan.
The motorcade arrived in Livingston Parish after driving up I-10 from the airport in New Orleans and to I-12.
Earlier this week, people packed the Old Live Oak High School football stadium for a candlelight vigil.
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