Greensburg ? Macksville police officer Robert Tim Buckman was rushing to warn rural residents Friday night of the approaching storm that had just destroyed this neighboring town when the tornado got him first.

Buckman, 46, critically injured when a twister crushed his squad car east of Macksville in Stafford County and flung it 300 yards, was declared dead shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday, his son, Derick Buckman, told The Associated Press.

“He died being a hero,” Derick Buckman said. “He was sworn to protect people and that’s what he was doing the night he got picked up by a tornado.”

His death pushed the weekend storms’ death toll to 12 and added more heartbreak for Greensburg residents as they continued to salvage what’s left of their flattened town after one of the strongest tornadoes to hit the U.S. in the past eight years.

During his final hours, the elder Buckman was able to symbolically give away his 18-year-old daughter in an unofficial, “promise” wedding at his bedside, Derick Buckman said. The family’s hometown preacher presided over the ceremony for Kylee Buckman and her boyfriend, Josh Mondello, 22, Derick’s best friend. Though the couple exchanged vows and “promise” rings, an official wedding is scheduled for August.

“He was there with his daughter to give her away,” said Derick Buckman, a 25-year-old firefighter.

The elder Buckman’s death caused some anxious hours half a continent away as his son-in-law, Army Pfc. Seth Cole, was told by his commanders at Fort Stewart in southeast Georgia that he would not be allowed to return home to console his wife and children but instead would be deployed to Iraq as scheduled on Tuesday.

But military officials changed their minds Tuesday afternoon as Cole and his unit were about to board buses to their deployment planes in Savannah.

“The battalion commander came over and sat down with me and said, ‘Where do you need to be?'” Cole told the Associated Press in a phone interview. “I said, ‘I need to be home with my wife’s family.’ And he said, ‘OK, you’re going.'”

Fort Stewart spokesman Rich Olson confirmed that Cole had been granted emergency leave.

Cole, 22, said he doesn’t know how much time he’ll have in Kansas before he has to deploy to Iraq, but said he will at least have time to attend his father-in-law’s funeral with his wife, December, and their three young girls.

“I’m ecstatic,” he said. “I just called my wife and she’s jumping for joy.”

Robert Buckman had worked for tiny Macksville – population 514 – since March 2002, serving as one of the city’s three full-time employees, providing everything from law enforcement to water/sewer service, said City Clerk Janet Hudson.

“The men are everything,” Hudson said.

Derick Buckman said he last talked with his father by phone Friday evening after hearing about Greensburg’s destruction and asked his father, a fellow volunteer firefighter in Stafford County, if they would need help with search and rescue efforts.

“He said, ‘I don’t know yet, but if you can get here, get here. We’ll probably need you here first,'” Derick Buckman said.

En route to meet his father, Buckman had to dodge numerous tornadoes himself. His father wasn’t as lucky.

Robert Buckman was traveling east of Macksville on U.S. 50 to warn residents in two rural houses to get to safety when he tried to call his youngest son, who was staying with his grandparents in Great Bend.

“I’m guessing he just pushed a button on the phone,” Derick Buckman said. “The last words out of his mouth that anybody heard of him before he was found were, ‘I can’t get away from it. It’s too big. I’m screwed.’ And then his phone and his police radio went dead.”