In the late summer of 1968, a young Huntsville police officer's life was tragically cut short during what began as a routine traffic stop. Officer William T. Gaskin, a 22-year-old male, had only been with the department for three months when he was shot and killed on August 27th. A U.S. Army veteran, Gaskin had pulled over a vehicle on Toll Gate Road and had radioed his location to dispatch.
Responding officers arrived to a grim scene, finding Officer Gaskin suffering from a fatal gunshot wound. In his hand, he still held the driver's license of the man he had stopped. The investigation that followed led to the identification and apprehension of a suspect.
The individual responsible for Officer Gaskin's death was subsequently committed to a mental institution. His time there was also marked by violence, as he was stabbed to death two years after the killing of the young officer. This brought a grim closure to a case that had taken a promising life and ended another in the confines of a state facility.
