Howard E. Thurman, a 45-year-old man, was serving as a deputy sheriff in Colbert County, Alabama, when his life ended on December 13, 1927, during a raid on an illicit still in the Sutton Hill district. The accounts available online describe a tense law-enforcement operation in which Thurman and three other deputies moved in on a group of four men at the still, apparently hoping to catch them by surprise. Instead, the confrontation turned deadly almost at once, and the quiet of the rural still site broke into gunfire.
According to the surviving summaries of the case, one of the men at the still opened fire and shot Thurman, killing him there during the raid. Another deputy fired back and fatally wounded that gunman in the exchange, leaving the suspected shooter dead as well. The online records that preserve Thurman’s case do not identify the suspect by name, and they do not describe any later arrest connected to Thurman’s killing. What they do show is a sudden, violent encounter that appears to have ended almost as quickly as it began, with Thurman dead and the man said to have fired the fatal shot also dying at the scene.
Because the surviving online information is so sparse, there is little public detail about any broader investigation, formal charges against other men present at the still, or any trial and conviction growing out of the case. The clearest thread running through the available records is that Thurman was killed in the line of duty while taking part in a liquor-still raid, and that the only suspect specifically described in those records was the shooter who was himself mortally wounded in the gun battle. Beyond that, the story remains largely frozen in the brief historical summaries that have survived: a deputy stepping into danger in Colbert County and not coming back out.
