Ernest Calvillo was a 37-year-old deputy with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department when he was shot while working an off-duty security detail outside the Wagon Wheel Post Bar in Avra Valley near Picture Rocks, Arizona. The incident began on the night of July 20, 1983, after a fight inside the bar spilled into the parking lot. Deputies had asked patron John Rierson to leave; he returned agitated while Deputy Calvillo and Sergeant Craig Newburn tried to de-escalate.

Curtis Rierson then drove up and, without warning, fired a .44 caliber handgun, striking Deputy Calvillo. Sergeant Newburn returned fire and killed Curtis Rierson at the scene and later subdued and arrested John Rierson. Calvillo, a United States Air Force veteran who’d served with the sheriff’s department for about ten and a half years, was taken to the University Emergency Center in Tucson and died of his wounds a few hours later on July 21, 1983. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.

Are there anyone who remembers the Wagon Wheel Post Bar or the deputies who worked that night and can share what they recall?