On June 16, 1984, Harold Lee Sonny Rogers, a 46-year-old detective with the Terre Haute Police Department, was shot and killed at the Wagon Wheel Night Club at 3rd and Walnut Streets in Terre Haute, Indiana. Rogers was off-duty and performing with his band when a disturbance between two patrons escalated; a 39-year-old man produced a .44-caliber handgun and began threatening people. Rogers drew his service weapon and ordered patrons down, and during the ensuing exchange of gunfire he was struck once in the head and died instantly. He was pronounced dead at Union Hospital.

The shooter fled the scene with his brother, sister-in-law, and his 23-year-old girlfriend, who had also been shot. Investigators later recovered the murder weapon at the suspect’s brother’s trailer in Universal, Indiana, and the girlfriend’s body was found buried in a nearby cemetery. The suspect, described as a six-time convicted felon who had recently been released from Leavenworth and escaped a halfway house near St. Louis, was captured, charged, convicted of murder and received a 90-year sentence. Rogers had served 21 years with the department and was survived by his wife, three sons, a daughter and grandchildren.

Did anyone in the community ever see or hear about the confrontation that night at the Wagon Wheel Night Club?