On a cold Detroit evening in December 1972, Officer Robert W. Dooley, a white U.S. Army veteran who had been with the Detroit Police Department for four years, was shot during a stakeout. He and his partner, Officer Robert Bradford, confronted three men wanted for robberies and shootings targeting police officers. A fierce exchange of gunfire left Bradford dead and Dooley critically wounded; Dooley’s injuries resulted in paralysis and affected him for the rest of his life.

The suspects were identified as Mark Bethune, John Boyd, and a man named Brown. Bethune and Boyd were later killed in separate shootouts with police in Atlanta, Georgia. Brown remained at large for a time and was later killed in a shootout with a drug dealer in Detroit. Dooley lived with the consequences of that 1972 encounter until he died of complications from his wounds on September 15, 2012, at age 68.

Does anyone have memories of Dooley or Bradford, or information about the 1972 investigation and the men named Bethune, Boyd, and Brown?