Deputy Constable Michael Ray Eakin III was a 25-year-old Harris County Precinct 1 officer killed on September 29, 1998, during a patrol traffic stop in Houston. He stopped a vehicle with four passengers; when a 17-year-old passenger fled on foot into nearby woods, Eakin pursued. A struggle followed and the juvenile produced a handgun, shooting Eakin twice, once in the throat and once in the head. Physical evidence indicated the suspect grabbed Eakin by the throat before firing. Responding deputies arrested the vehicle’s other occupants.

Eakin had served three years with the constable’s office and was survived by his fiancée, his mother and father, and the family who had been his guardians as a teenager. The juvenile was sentenced to death on May 25, 1999; that sentence was later commuted to life in prison after a March 2005 United States Supreme Court ruling that executions for crimes committed as juveniles are unconstitutional.