Lou Welch

"He's all yours sir. Unless you want to walk around the block a few times and leave him to us."

- Welch, arresting Garibaldi's former second Jack

Lou Welch was a hero introduced in the Babylon 5 episode Survivors.

He was portrayed by David L. Crowley.

After Babylon 5 became operational in 2256, Welch was assigned to the station as a security officer, under the command of his friend Michael Garibaldi. He would become one of Garibaldi's most trusted officers, behind his second Jack.

At the end of 2258 Garibaldi had been shot in the back by Jack. Garibaldi spent the next several days in a coma until Dr. Stephen Franklin and John Sheridan used an alien healing device to heal Garibaldi enough to enable him to come out of the coma. With assistance from Talia Winters Garibaldi saw that it was Jack who shot him. Welch was sent to apprehend Jack, who had been working in the security office. An enraged Welch arrested Jack and told Sheridan that if he wanted to walk around the block Welch and Garibaldi's people would handle Jack. Sheridan, however, ordered Jack to be put in maximum security, and Welch reluctantly complied.

Jack would continue to work on Babylon 5 into 2259. Welch and most of the security department were quite happy when Garibaldi came back to work after recovering from his injuries. In mid 2259 Welch helped Garibaldi deal with a massive influx of EarthForce marines to B5.

Later in 2259 Welch left B5 after being promoted to be one of President Morgan Clark's guards. By then Zack Allan had become Garibaldi's second. Welch remained in EarthForce until the beginning of the Earth Alliance Civil War, at which point he resigned.

Back in private life, Welch worked as a security consultant for a number of firms. Due to an invisibility web he had acquired on Cygnus IV he became very good at tracking others and covert operations.

In 2269, Welch's old friend Garibaldi hired him to accompany him and G'Kar to Centauri Prime to investigate the possibility of the Centauri government would lash out against the alliance. Unfortunately Welch's use of the invisibility web alerted the Drakh Shiv'kala to his presence, and the Drakh remotely deactivated the web. This enabled the Throk Milifa to catch Welch in the act of downloading data related to the Drakh backed Prime Candidates, and Milifa murdered Welch.

After Welch's body was discovered, Garibaldi was informed that it was most likely the work of a common street criminal. Vir Cotto, however, had the techno-mage Finian extract Welch's final memories, which allowed Finian to determine the idenity of Welch's killer.