On March 12, 1911, H. M. Holloway, a White male Deputy Sheriff with the Pulaski County Sheriff's Department who also served as a detective for the Queen and Crescent Railroad, was killed in the line of duty in Stearns, Kentucky. The incident occurred during a period of significant labor unrest and violence known as the Queen and Crescent strike, which involved white railroad firemen protesting the employment of Black firemen on the Cincinnati Southern Railway.
Tensions in the region were extremely high, with reports of snipers hidden in the mountains targeting trains and railroad employees.
Deputy Holloway was stationed in Stearns on the night of his death, assigned to guard the railroad's coal chutes, a critical piece of infrastructure for the steam locomotives operating on the line. Around 8:00 p.m., while performing his watch duties, he was ambushed by unknown assailants concealed in the darkness of the surrounding hillsides. The attackers opened fire from their hidden positions, striking Holloway. His body was discovered shortly after the shooting began.
In the same attack, another law enforcement officer, Deputy Sheriff J. T. Lovett, was also killed. Lovett, who had been guarding the coal chutes alongside Holloway, was found approximately half an hour later with a fatal gunshot wound to the head. The dual assassinations were part of a broader wave of violence that swept through the area that day, which also included attacks on passing trains in nearby towns such as violent assaults on crews in Kings Mountain and Glenmary, Tennessee.
Despite the presence of numerous railroad detectives and the authorization of a large posse to quell the strike-related violence, no individuals were ever successfully prosecuted for the murders of Deputy Holloway and Deputy Lovett. Contemporary reports indicated that the shots came from "mountain marksmen" sympathetic to the striking firemen, but the specific identity of the riflemen remained unknown. The chaotic nature of the conflict, characterized by guerrilla-style attacks from the dense cover of the Appalachian terrain, made it impossible for authorities to identify or apprehend the suspects, and the cases remain unsolved.
