Samuel Tucker McCallum, a 51-year-old White/Caucasian male, was the city marshal of Lake Village, Arkansas when he was shot and killed on October 11, 1928. He had been on the job only six weeks. That evening he responded to a disturbance at a local coffee shop; when he arrived, an intoxicated man immediately opened fire, fatally wounding him. McCallum left behind his wife and six children, a sudden loss that reverberated through the small Chicot County seat where he served.
The gunman was arrested and later received a life sentence. A decade later, in 1938, the governor granted the killer a pardon, cutting short the punishment that had been imposed for the marshal’s murder. The record of the shooting, the life sentence, and the subsequent gubernatorial pardon are preserved in memorial accounts of McCallum’s death and service, which also note the café disturbance that drew him into harm’s way.
McCallum is memorialized today in public archives and remembrance sites that document victims of gun violence and fallen law enforcement officers. These records place his death in Lake Village on the date above and mark his burial locally, underscoring how a routine call in a familiar setting ended a new marshal’s brief tenure and a family man’s life.
