Deputy Sheriff Denny Van Lawrence, a 77-year-old Caucasian man from Jackpot, Nevada, died on June 26, 1982 of medical complications traced to a gunshot wound he suffered three decades earlier. On August 12, 1952, while investigating a minor traffic crash on U.S. 93 south of Jackpot, he was shot in the forehead by a man recently released from the California Department of Corrections. The attacker also took Lawrence’s service revolver and fired on bystanders as he tried to seize a vehicle to flee.

Two armed citizens ultimately shot and killed the attacker at the scene. Lawrence survived the initial wound but was left completely disabled by severe brain damage and lived in an assisted living home for the next thirty years before his death on June 26, 1982. Is there anyone who knew Deputy Lawrence or remembers the 1952 shooting and its long aftermath?