Donnie Gene Kelley was a 28-year-old Leland, Mississippi police officer with four years on the force when he was mortally wounded in the late 1970s. The shooting occurred during a traffic stop on Highway 61 after Kelley tried to pull over a car whose occupants had just committed an armed robbery near Vicksburg. Two of the men fired shotguns as Kelley approached; pellets shattered his windshield and struck him in the face, leaving him critically injured. He died of those injuries about ten weeks later.

The three men in the vehicle — ages 16, 23 and 26 — were captured minutes after the attack. Investigators discovered the car was stolen and that its owner had been murdered, his body dumped in a swamp near Belle Chasse, Louisiana. The trio were convicted of aggravated assault on a police officer and given 30-year terms for the attack on Kelley, and received life sentences for the armed robbery. One of the men reportedly assaulted multiple prison guards on the day Kelley was shot.

Does anyone have memories of Officer Kelley, the department he served, or that stretch of Highway 61 around the time this happened?