A violent jailbreak in the early morning hours of February 28, 1982, in Dayton, Tennessee, left Sergeant Bruce Owens gravely injured. Owens, 47, was working in the dispatcher’s office when inmate James Allen Smith, 32, overpowered a jailer and, during a struggle in the jail’s front area, obtained Owens’ service pistol. The weapon discharged while still in the holster and struck Owens in the abdomen, causing catastrophic injuries to his kidneys and spine and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Smith took two other officers, Deputy Charles Walling and Dayton Police Officer Ed Byron, hostage and fled in a patrol car. He later released them on Jackson Island, shot out the radio, and disappeared. Smith resurfaced in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he committed an armed robbery, shot a responding officer, and after a 45-minute standoff was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on March 5, 1982.

Owens spent more than a decade confined to a wheelchair at the Rhea County Nursing Home and died on December 30, 1994, at age 60 from complications of the 1982 gunshot wound. Is there anyone who remembers Owens, the jail incident, or the manhunt who can add details about those days?