Eighteen-year-old Ollie Shelby Jr., also referred to as Ricky Ollie in some records, was killed inside the Hinds County Jail in Jackson, Mississippi, on January 22, 1965, shortly after transfer from the city jail. He had been arrested on an allegation of making an obscene gesture toward a white woman. Law enforcement present recounted that Shelby first pushed an officer in an elevator, then attempted to take an officer’s gun, ran into a jailer’s bedroom, struggled with another jailer over an empty holster, and was then shot three times by Hinds County Deputy E.O. Sanderford; two shots struck and killed him.

A Coroner’s Jury convened after the shooting and, based on officer testimony, returned a verdict of justifiable homicide; Deputy Sanderford was not arrested or charged. The incident prompted protests and criticism from Jackson’s Black community and NAACP leaders, who questioned why the unarmed teenager was shot three times. The FBI interviewed the jail officers during the original investigation; the agency later reopened the matter in 2008 to consider a civil rights violation but the Department of Justice concluded prosecution was not possible, noting that Deputy Sanderford had died in 1968 and the statute of limitations had expired, and the case was closed in 2010.

Does anyone have contemporaneous documents, photos, or eyewitness accounts that shed more light on what happened that day?