Eva M. O’Connell, a retired Holyoke Police Department lieutenant and the first female officer to carry a gun and work the streets, died Tuesday. She was 74.
“Eva served the city nobly for decades as a police officer rising to the rank of lieutenant,” City Council President Kevin A. Jourdain said Wednesday. “She had a deep commitment to Holyoke. My deepest sympathy goes out to her husband and our former police chief, Stephen Donoghue, and the rest of her family. She will be missed.”
O’Connell was the highest-ranking woman in the Holyoke Police Department when she retired as a lieutenant in 2007 after 36 years. She became the second woman to join the Paper City police force in May 1970. – READ MORE
