On November 13, 2001, Deputy Sheriff Billy Ray Walls III, 28, was killed while serving a warrant for terroristic threatening in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Walls and two fellow Jessamine County deputies entered a 150-square-foot houseboat on barrels where 75-year-old Phillip Walker lived. Walker fired eleven shots from a .30 caliber M-1 carbine; Walls died at the scene. Captain Chuck Morgan was critically wounded and later died of his injuries two weeks afterward, and the third deputy was seriously injured. Officers returned fire and Walker was killed in the exchange. A search of the small dwelling turned up more than 20 handguns.

Walls was a husband to Priscilla and father to an infant daughter, Kaley. He had been an Eagle Scout and a Cadet Colonel in Air Force JROTC at Bryan Station High School and served with the Wilmore Police Department, the Fayette County Sheriff’s Department and as a dispatcher at the University of Kentucky Police Department before joining the Jessamine County Sheriff’s Office.

Does anyone have memories of Deputy Walls or information about the incident that could add context to what happened that day?