Travis Cental Wallace, 41, was a five-year veteran of the Helena-West Helena Police Department and served as a patrol officer in West Helena. On the evening of November 12, 2020, while looking for a suspect linked to a shooting from a week earlier, Officer Wallace located the suspect at the Delta Inn Motel on U.S. Highway 49. He used his patrol car to block the suspect’s sport utility vehicle as it tried to leave the parking lot.

When the vehicle stopped, the 29-year-old suspect, identified as Latarius Quayshun Howard, exited and fired at Officer Wallace. Wallace returned fire but was wounded; the gunman then re-entered the vehicle, which was driven by another person, and both fled. Officer Wallace was taken to a local hospital, where he died of his injuries. A multiagency manhunt led to arrests the next day in Mississippi: Howard in Shaw and a 24-year-old, Bruce Hillie, in Indianola. Howard was charged with capital murder and Hillie was charged with hindering apprehension.