On August 24, 2001, 35-year-old Whitehall Police Department officer Terry Mcdowell was shot and killed while attempting to serve a traffic citation. Mcdowell and his partner had gone to the home of a woman who earlier had driven her husband home after his DUI arrest; when officers discovered the woman had no driver’s license they instructed her to walk home. Upon returning to serve the citation, the woman’s husband fired a .357 caliber handgun through the door, striking Mcdowell in the chest above his vest and then seriously wounding Mcdowell’s partner in the face and eye. After the partner retreated to call for help, the suspect stood over Mcdowell and shot him several more times.

Backup officers wounded the suspect in the leg; the suspect then committed suicide in his backyard. The gun used had been stolen from a neighbor who had been murdered. Mcdowell, a United States Army veteran who had served 12 years with the department, left a wife, an 8-year-old son and an 11-month-old daughter. His wife, Angie, later founded Get Behind the Badge, and the community holds annual memorials each August; his son Seth became a Union County sheriff’s deputy and frequently speaks at the memorial.

Did anyone in the Whitehall area have contact with the family or witness the events that August day who can add details?