Ernest Kearns Ponce de Leon was a 40-year-old Tallahassee Police Department officer who was shot and killed on July 8, 1988, while assisting another officer at a suspicious-vehicle call at Levy Avenue and Lake Bradford Road in Tallahassee, Florida. The vehicle’s occupants said their identification was in the trunk; as one occupant was being escorted to the trunk by another officer, two men pulled out handguns and opened fire. Officer Ponce de Leon, not wearing a vest, was struck in the chest and later died of his wounds. The suspects were apprehended at the scene; they had escaped from the Maryland Department of Corrections several days earlier. The primary suspect, then 33, was sentenced to death for the murder, and the other participants received lengthy prison terms.

Ponce de Leon was the first Tallahassee officer killed in the line of duty. On the 10th anniversary of his death a street adjacent to the police station on Seventh Avenue was named in his honor, and the shooting has been incorporated into officer safety and survival training. Does anyone have information about the scene that day or knew Officer Ponce de Leon?