Charles Quincy Lukens, 35, male, was a Wyandotte County deputy sheriff in Rosedale, Kansas, on December 8, 1909, when a routine civil duty turned deadly. That afternoon he accompanied the town’s night marshal to serve divorce papers on a man named Charles T. Galloway. When confronted, Galloway resisted, fled, and fired a. 38-caliber revolver as the officers tried to stop him. In the exchange that followed, Lukens was struck and fatally wounded, dying in the line of duty during the attempted service at a residence in Rosedale.
The man who shot him, Charles T. Galloway, did not submit to arrest. After escaping the initial encounter, he holed up in a house he commandeered and was later killed in a gun duel with responding police, ending the pursuit the same day. Contemporary memorial accounts list no surviving arrest in the case; Galloway, the sole suspect, died following the armed standoff, closing the investigation without a prosecution.
