George W. Moore, 41, male, white, was a Detective Sergeant with the Little Rock Police Department when he was killed in the line of duty on July 24, 1923. That evening, he and Detective Sergeant Luther C. Hay went to 1005 Chester Street to investigate reports of an illegal dice game. As the two approached the house, three men inside opened fire without warning. Moore was struck three times in the head and died instantly; Hay, hit multiple times, succumbed to his wounds two days later.
Authorities quickly identified and pursued the suspects. According to department memorial records, all three were taken into custody shortly after the shooting. Court documents and contemporaneous accounts show that Joe Sullivan and Emory Connell were among those charged; legal proceedings moved swiftly that summer, with special venires called and the state ultimately electing to try one indictment first while keeping the companion case ready. By September 20, 1923, the trio had been convicted in connection with the detectives’ murders and sentenced to death.
In a dramatic turn, on February 1, 1924, the condemned men escaped from the Arkansas State Prison after kidnapping the warden and forcing him to drive them away. A posse cornered them near Redfield within days; two suspects—reported in newspapers as Connell and an associate who had fled with them—were shot and killed in a gun battle, while the remaining man was wounded and recaptured. The surviving defendant, Joe Sullivan, was executed in the electric chair on April 18, 1924, for Moore’s killing, a date corroborated by execution rolls and archival listings. One of the suspects tied to the Chester Street ambush was also wanted in Oklahoma for the 1922 killing of Deputy Sheriff John Lung, underscoring how widely their crimes reverberated beyond Arkansas.
Moore had served Little Rock for 12 years and left behind a wife and two daughters. Local memorials and historical retrospectives remember the Chester Street ambush as one of the department’s darkest moments, paired with the loss of Hay, who died on July 26, 1923. Their names sit together on roll calls of fallen officers and in community histories, marking the night a routine gambling check erupted into sudden, fatal gunfire.
