On a summer evening, Arkansas State Trooper Allen Harvie Bufford, a 29-year-old male, was on duty. It was July 27, 1969, and Trooper Bufford had served with the Arkansas State Police for one year. He was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force before joining the state police. That evening, he conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle for speeding.
As Trooper Bufford was in the process of writing a citation for the female driver, the male passenger, who was 31 years old at the time, unexpectedly
exited the vehicle. Armed with a. 22 caliber handgun, the passenger approached and fatally shot Trooper Bufford. The incident cut short the life of a young officer and a family man, who was survived by his expectant wife and two children.
The suspect had a violent past, having recently been paroled from the Arkansas Penitentiary after serving seven years of a 21-year sentence for the murder of a fellow inmate. Following the shooting of Trooper Bufford, he was apprehended. On January 19, 1970, he was convicted of the trooper's murder and sentenced to life in prison. He would spend the remainder of his life incarcerated, eventually dying in prison on August 7, 2005. Trooper Bufford was laid to rest in Alexander, Pulaski County, Arkansas.
