In the quiet early morning hours of February 28, 1982, in Dayton, Tennessee, a violent jailbreak shattered the calm at the Rhea County Jail, forever altering the life of Sergeant Bruce Owens. Owens, a 47-year-old Caucasian male, was on duty in the dispatcher's office when an inmate, identified as 32-year-old James Allen Smith, initiated a desperate escape. Armed with a Bic cigarette lighter fashioned to look like a weapon, Smith overpowered a jailer who was releasing another inmate for work.
As Smith made his way toward the front of the jail, he encountered Sergeant Owens. In the ensuing struggle, Smith managed to get his hands on Owens' pistol. The weapon discharged while still in the holster, the bullet striking Owens in the abdomen. The single shot caused catastrophic injuries, damaging his kidneys and spine, and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. In the chaos, Smith managed to take two other officers, Deputy Charles Walling and Dayton Police Officer Ed Byron, hostage. He forced them into a patrol car and fled the scene.
Smith's escape triggered a massive manhunt. He eventually released the two hostage officers after driving to Jackson Island, where he handcuffed them in the back of the patrol car and shot out the radio before disappearing. The search for Smith continued until he resurfaced in Shreveport, Louisiana, on March 5, 1982. There, he committed an armed robbery of a drug store and shot a responding police officer. After a brief chase, Smith was cornered in a residence. Following a 45-minute standoff with law enforcement, a single gunshot was heard from inside. Officers found Smith dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
For more than a decade, Bruce Owens lived with the devastating consequences of that fateful night. Confined to a wheelchair, he resided at the Rhea County Nursing Home. On December 30, 1994, at the age of 60, Sergeant Bruce Owens succumbed to the complications from the gunshot wound he had sustained twelve and a half years earlier. He was laid to rest in the Spring City Memorial Gardens Cemetery.
