On June 24, 1982, Detective Sergeant Samuel A. Hicks, a 38-year-old White male and 18-year veteran of the King County Sheriff’s Office, was killed while working a homicide lead in rural King County near Flaming Geyser State Park. Plainclothes he and his partner, Detective Leo Hursh, were driving an unmarked car down a long, wooded driveway seeking a suspect, Robert Wayne Hughes, when Hughes opened fire with a high-powered rifle. Both officers returned fire and sought cover, but Hicks was struck in the chest and died later that day at Harborview Medical Center during surgery.

The shooting triggered a large manhunt; Hughes, then 29, was arrested two days later following a citizen tip. Investigators reported Hughes was a convicted felon on parole and was wanted in the robbery and murder of another man a week earlier. At trial Hughes was convicted of Hicks’s murder and the attempted murder of Detective Hursh; he had already pleaded guilty to the other killing and received consecutive life terms.

If anyone has information about the events that led up to that June 24 encounter, please share what is known.