On Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 1981, 25-year-old Troy Police Officer George Steve Watkins responded to a disturbance on Daisy Court about an elderly man reportedly firing a gun. Officers had visited the same address earlier that day, confiscated a weapon, and did not take the man into custody. When Watkins returned on the second call the suspect, still armed, opened fire and a single bullet struck under Watkins’s left arm where his vest did not cover. Watkins was taken to a local hospital and died of his wound.

Two other officers, Sergeant Clark Boutwell and Sergeant Malcolm Griffin, were wounded by gunfire. Other officers returned fire and the suspect was shot and killed at the scene. Watkins, a Marine Corps veteran who had served with the Troy Police Department nearly two years, left behind his parents and four brothers and was remembered by colleagues as a lifelong friend.

What details about the earlier call or the decision not to arrest the man that day might help explain how this escalation occurred, and did anyone have information about the Daisy Court household?