Salavia C. “Lafe” Bowen was a 39-year-old White male serving as a patrolman with the Wheeling Police Department in Wheeling, West Virginia. On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1902, Bowen encountered a man near 1033 Market Street whom he was attempting to arrest for public drunkenness. What began as an apparently routine arrest turned violent when the suspect resisted. During the confrontation, the man produced or used a firearm and shot Bowen.
The surviving accounts identify gunfire as the cause of Bowen’s fatal injuries, although the specific type of gun involved is not recorded.
Bowen did not die at the scene. He survived the shooting for approximately two days before succumbing to his wounds on Friday, December 26, 1902. This makes December 24 the date of the shooting rather than the date of his death. Bowen had served with the Wheeling Police Department for approximately one year. His death left behind his wife and an infant child, and he later became one of the Wheeling officers formally remembered as having died in the line of duty.
The gunman did not remain in Wheeling after shooting Bowen. He fled West Virginia and made his way into Ohio. His escape ultimately ended in another armed confrontation when officers in Bridgeport, Ohio, located or confronted him. Rather than surrender peacefully, the fugitive became involved in a shootout with the Bridgeport officers. Despite that confrontation, he was taken into custody. The available online accounts describe a single offender in Bowen’s shooting and do not identify any accomplice or additional suspect. They also do not identify the gunman by name.
Following his arrest in Ohio, the suspect was returned to West Virginia to face prosecution for Bowen’s killing. Authorities charged him with Bowen’s murder, and the case resulted in a guilty finding. The surviving online memorial accounts do not provide the date of the trial, the specific court in which it was conducted, the precise degree of homicide reflected in the verdict, or details of the testimony and evidence presented. They do establish, however, that the man was convicted in connection with Bowen’s death. Despite the fatal shooting of an on-duty police officer, he received a sentence of only three years of imprisonment. He served that sentence at the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville.
The convicted gunman’s story continued after his release from prison. On January 11, 1908, several years after Bowen’s death and after completion of the three-year sentence, the man was in Alverton, Pennsylvania, where he attempted to burglarize a residence. During that attempted break-in, a boy living in the home confronted the intruder and shot him. The former prisoner was killed in that encounter. The online accounts describing Bowen’s case do not report that the boy was treated as a suspect in Bowen’s case, nor do they provide information indicating that another person was ever arrested or prosecuted for Bowen’s shooting.
Bowen’s death therefore grew out of an attempted public-drunkenness arrest on December 24, 1902, rather than an unexplained or unsolved attack. The person responsible fled the state, engaged Ohio officers in a shootout, was arrested, returned to West Virginia, charged with murder, convicted, and imprisoned. Although the available online records leave the offender unnamed and omit many courtroom details, they make clear that Bowen’s killing was solved and resulted in a conviction. Bowen died from the wounds on December 26, and his name has remained on Wheeling’s official roll of officers killed in the line of duty.
