Robert Walter Hedman was a 49-year-old deputy with the Otero County Sheriff’s Department who was killed in the line of duty on December 18, 2004, in Otero County, New Mexico. A Army veteran who had served in Vietnam, Hedman had worked for the Tularosa Police Department, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department and the Alamogordo Department of Public Safety before joining Otero County, where he served his final three years.

Deputy Hedman and his partner were dispatched about 7:00 pm to a domestic dispute on U.S. 82, roughly ten miles east of Cloudcroft. After finding blood at the front entrance and making contact with a man and a three-year-old girl, the man locked the door. Hedman went to the rear to secure the scene and was shot and killed when the man opened fire. A shootout then occurred at the front; the suspect was shot and killed. Officers entering the house also found the body of a woman who had been murdered earlier that evening. Hedman was a husband and father of two.

Does anyone have recollections from Cloudcroft or the U.S. 82 area that night, or information that could add detail about the sequence of events?