On November 28, 1965, Alfred Moore, a 38-year-old male Black/African American, was working an undercover surveillance assignment for the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control in the Central City area of Phoenix, near the Calderon Ballroom at 16th Street and Buckeye Road. In the early morning hours, while watching a location as part of his liquor-enforcement duties, he noticed a violent disturbance between a man and a woman outside the ballroom.
The dispute was later described as a domestic incident involving a man and his ex-wife, unrelated to Moore’s surveillance operation. Acting on his obligation as a law enforcement agent rather than remaining focused solely on the original assignment, he moved in to investigate and try to protect the woman.
As Moore intervened, the man produced a. 25-caliber handgun and opened fire, shooting the agent. Moore was critically wounded and succumbed to his injuries a short time later, his death recorded as a homicide by gunfire in Central City, Arizona. After shooting Moore, the assailant seized the woman and forced her to leave with him against her will. He fled to a nearby motel, where he held her captive and barricaded himself inside the room. Law enforcement officers from Phoenix responded, and by the following morning they had tracked the suspect to that motel. When officers surrounded the room, the gunman released the woman, ending her ordeal, but then took his own life rather than surrender. Because the shooter died by suicide as officers closed in, there was no formal arrest or trial, but authorities considered the case resolved with the identification of the gunman and the recovery of the surviving victim.
Moore’s death left a lasting impact on both his agency and the local community. He had moved to Arizona with his parents around 1936 and, by the mid-1960s, was serving as a liquor control agent for the state, with about two years of service at the Department of Liquor Licenses and Control at the time he was killed. He is remembered as an officer who gave his life while stepping into a dangerous domestic confrontation to protect a woman he did not know, a sacrifice his department later highlighted in memorials and retrospectives honoring fallen agents. Public records and online memorials continue to commemorate him as a victim of gun violence and a fallen law enforcement officer, emphasizing both the suddenness of the attack and the courage he showed in choosing to intervene that night in Central City.
