Special Deputy Sheriff Travis Haynes of the Quay County Sheriff’s Department responded on May 2, 1972 to a rancher’s call about two stranded motorists while working in his store in Tucumcari, New Mexico. He left with the two men and was later found with a gunshot wound to the head, abandoned behind a telephone building in Taiban. The two men were later identified as escapees from the Kansas State Prison, pursued, apprehended and convicted for the shooting.

Deputy Haynes survived surgery but never fully recovered. He remained under medical care for nearly 12 years and died on February 14, 1984 in Abilene, Texas. At the time of the 1972 attack he had served 25 years as a Special Deputy. The local community raised $754.80 through a fund to help cover his hospital and medical expenses.

Haynes’s name is remembered among those who died in the line of duty. If anyone knew Deputy Haynes, the circumstances of the stop on May 2, 1972, or has additional information about the two men involved, please share what is remembered.