James David JD Chaffin was 33 and working as a delivery driver for an oil company in Russellville, Arkansas when he was killed on December 28, 1987. He had just returned from responding to a car fire when Ronald Gene Simmons arrived at Taylor Oil Company intending to kill the owner. Simmons shot and wounded the owner, then shot Chaffin at point-blank range; Chaffin died of a single gunshot to the head from a .22-caliber pistol. Chaffin was not known to Simmons and was killed while on duty.

Simmons’s attack at the oil company was part of a broader rampage that day; he had already killed a law firm secretary, Kathy Kendrick, earlier and wounded others before being apprehended. Investigators later found fourteen members of Simmons’s family murdered at his home in Dover in the days before the public shootings. Simmons was tried and convicted for the killings, received multiple death sentences, and was executed on June 25, 1990.

Does anyone have memories of JD Chaffin, his work with the oil company, or the Russellville community in 1987 that could add context to his life?