Bolivar S. Moore, a 32-year-old White male deputy constable in St. Francis County, set out into the cold early hours of December 18, 1912, to locate a man wanted for larceny in Forrest City. Around 2:30 a.m., at the intersection of Garland Avenue and Forrest Street, the encounter turned deadly. When Moore attempted to take the suspect into custody, the man drew a firearm and shot him.
As Moore lay on the ground, the assailant rifled his person, seizing the deputy’s revolver and keys before bolting into the darkness, leaving a stunned community to awaken to the news that a young officer had been killed in the line of duty.
Reports from the period and later memorial accounts identify the suspect as Cecil Mallory. Locals pursued him in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, and accounts preserved in genealogical transcriptions describe Mallory himself being killed later that same day, a grim, swift sequel to the murder that had shaken Forrest City only hours earlier. Moore’s burial records place his death on December 18, 1912, underscoring the speed with which the tragedy and its aftermath unfolded.
No record points to a formal arrest in the case; the suspect’s death ended the prospect of a courtroom reckoning. Memorials to Moore memorialize the circumstances with stark brevity: a deputy constable, shot while trying to do his duty, his service weapon stolen as his killer fled, and a town left to carry the memory of a night when the routine pursuit of a thief spiraled into fatal violence.
