Hero policeman Brendan Lynch dies on bike ride Brendan Lynch spent 31 years in the police force. A HIGHWAY patrol officer who once risked his life to save an elderly man from almost certain death was struck and killed on an annual birthday bike ride from Benalla to Melbourne. Brendan Lynch, who spent 31 years in the force, much of it enforcing road rules, died on the Hume Highway near Beveridge as his wife waited for him kilometres down the road. For the past 12 years he had made the ride on his birthday. This year he was rostered to work on his 52nd birthday. He booked to stay in a Melbourne hotel on Sunday night to celebrate. Sgt Lynch had ridden more than 150km when a bus hit him on the Hume Highway about 2pm. His wife, Jennifer, had been driving ahead in five to 10km intervals. When he failed to arrive she thought she had missed him. I thought Brendan might be ahead and had a phone call (in Melbourne). . . about a cyclist who had been killed. When I got to the hotel I got the bad news. Their daughter, Libby, then received a call from her mother. "Mum was waiting for him but he never turned up," she said. She rang me hysterical, she knew. Libby said her father was a role model to his four children and loved life in the country. She said he had followed in the footsteps of his father, Bryan, by joining the force and had not taken a sick day throughout his career. "He just loved helping people," she said. He witnessed a lot of trauma in his job, mostly out on the highway. He died doing what he loved and left on good terms with everybody. He will truly be missed. A funeral for Sgt Lynch will be held at St Joseph's Catholic Church, Benalla, on Monday at 11am.