William Everette Wheeler, male, age 29, was the chief deputy sheriff of Independence County when he was fatally shot on January 2, 1935, near Almond, Arkansas. He and Sheriff J. R. Engles had set out to serve an arrest warrant after a gas drive-off at a station in nearby Rosie led authorities to a rough hideout in the Brock Mountain area. Wheeler went to the rear of the house while others approached the front; in the confusion that followed, the gunman burst from the dwelling and opened fire at
close range, mortally wounding Wheeler.
The suspect was identified as Robert Rose, a 27-year-old parolee who had been roaming the region committing burglaries with an associate, Woodrow Crump. Crump was arrested first along the road, but Rose fled into the woods, triggering a massive manhunt that drew hundreds of local citizens and, by order of Governor Junius Marion Futrell, a company of the Arkansas National Guard. Two days later, on January 4, 1935, officers captured Rose in a barn in the Brock Mountain country west of Batesville. Fearing a lynching amid the angry crowds, Engles secreted Rose out of Independence County and lodged him at Tucker Prison Farm for safekeeping.
A special grand jury indicted Rose for first-degree murder on January 17. He waived the usual waiting period, pleaded guilty, and was swiftly convicted; Judge S. Marcus Bone set the execution for February 23, 1935. Rose offered no formal last words before he was put to death in the electric chair at Tucker that morning—ending a span of just fifty-one days from the killing to his execution, a speed noted by contemporary newspapers.
Accounts recorded after the shooting differ on the moment Wheeler was hit—some say Rose used women inside as human shields while firing, others that the two men struggled before Rose shot at point-blank range—but all agree that Wheeler died in the line of duty while attempting to make an arrest. Memorial records summarize the encounter in simpler terms: Wheeler and a small posse approached the shack to serve the warrant, Rose broke from the residence, and the fatal shots followed; the killer was captured after a large manhunt and executed later that same winter.
