Traffic Alert: Closures For Rockville Firefighter Funeral Route

ROCKVILLE, MD — Maryland State Police issued a traffic advisory Thursday for the funeral of Deputy Chief State Fire Marshal Sander B. Cohen, the Rockville volunteer firefighter who was struck and killed on I-270 in Montgomery County Friday night.

Beginning at 7 a.m. Thursday, Montrose Road between Montrose Parkway and East Jefferson Street will be open to local traffic only. The slow lane of both eastbound and westbound Montrose Road will be closed for parking vehicles, police said.

The funeral is expected to begin at 11 a.m. at B'nai Israel Congregation in Rockville.

The procession after the service will take place at approximately 12:30 p.m. and will take the following route:

• Montrose Road east to East Jefferson Street
• South on East Jefferson Street to east on Montrose Parkway
• North on MD 355 to east on Shady Grove Road
• East on Rt. 200 to north on Rt. 97
• East on Batchellors Forest Road to the Judean Memorial Gardens in Olney (the interment is private)

If you see the procession, police ask you to please not pull out into it. The procession will pass within a few minutes.

Cohen, 33, was one of two off-duty law enforcement officers killed Friday. The FBI agent killed in the crash was identified by the agency as Supervisory Special Agent Carlos Wolff, 36, of Gaithersburg.

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According to police, Wolff's vehicle was involved in a single-car crash and Cohen stopped at the scene of the crash for help, and used his car to block the damaged vehicle from traffic. The two officers were standing in the shoulder when a car going southbound swerved to avoid the cars in the fast lane and struck them, police said. The two men were thrown over the road partition and at least one of them was hit by a car going northbound, police said.

"Deputy Chief Cohen had no idea who was inside the vehicle he stopped behind," Maryland State Police Superintendent Colonel William Pallozzi said in a news release. "He just recognized that someone needed help and he never hesitated last night to stop and help someone in need. Deputy Chief State Fire Marshal Sander Cohen has now joined the ranks of Maryland's Fallen Heroes."

Police and fire vehicles escorted Cohen's body from Baltimore to the Danzansky-Goldberg Funeral Home in Rockville Saturday.

"I don't think there was a dry eye in this house or anywhere in Rockville. People stopped on the corner, people saluted, cars pulled over, people came out of restaurants. It was very touching," Eric Bernard, president of the Rockville Fire Department, told NBC Washington.

Cohen joined the RVFD in 2003 and was also a deputy fire marshal with the Office of the State Fire Marshal, an agency of the Maryland Department of State Police. He grew up in Rockville, was a graduate of Winston Churchill High School and started volunteering at the fire department at age 16.

Photos: Cohen via Office of the Maryland State Fire Marshal