BY DONNIE JOHNSTON

Thursday’s fatal shooting marks only the second time in the town of Culpeper’s recorded history in which a police officer on duty has fatally shot someone.
The first incident occurred 76 years ago, and the officer stood trial for first-degree murder. A jury acquitted him.
According to court records, on Jan. 18, 1936, town police Officer Hugh Marvin “Billy” Hawkins told brothers Gig and Johnny Elliott and a friend of theirs to leave town because they were drunk.
Hawkins later testified that Gig Elliott was “driving recklessly” when he left town so he and Officer Lewis Herndon jumped into the town’s one patrol car and gave chase up the Sperryville Pike.
Hawkins caught up with Elliott just as he reached the lane to his home, about a mile west of Culpeper, and rammed the young man’s car.
Johnny Elliott and the friend, identified in court documents only as “the Partlow boy,” jumped out and ran, but Hawkins was able to handcuff Gig Elliott before he could exit the vehicle.
Johnny Elliott told his father, Will, what had happened, and the older man came up the hill “yelling obscenities,” according to court records.
Stories differ on what happened next. Hawkins claimed Will Elliott was carrying a shotgun and put it to his shoulder. At that point, the town policeman fired his gun three times, fatally wounding the father.
Hearing the shot, Johnny Elliott returned to the scene and, according to Hawkins’ testimony, jumped on the officer’s back. At that point, Hawkins took his one prisoner and returned to town, leaving Will Elliott lying in a pool of blood on a cold January night.
Elliott’s wife, Ada, called a taxi to take her husband to a doctor, where he died soon after arriving. She told a different story about what happened.
Ada Elliott and four other members of her family testified before a grand jury that there had been no confrontation and that the officer killed Elliott in cold blood.
Ada Elliott added that the shotgun did not belong to her husband and had been planted at the scene. She called her husband’s killing murder, and the grand jury indicted the officer.
During the trial, held less than a month after the incident, Hawkins had an unlikely ally come to his rescue. Frank Bell, an inmate at the Lewisburg federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania, testified that the shotgun in question had once belonged to him and that he had traded it to a member of the Elliott family.
While on the witness stand, Bell identified his initials that he said he had carved into the stock of the weapon.
A jury of 12 men found Hawkins not guilty at the conclusion of the four-day trial.
Hawkins remained on the force for about 10 more years, but not without controversy. On May 31, 1940, the Town Council suspended him pending an investigation into “charges of a serious nature.”
There was no further mention of those charges, either in Town Council minutes or in the local newspaper.
Hawkins died in 1954.

Donnie Johnston:
djohnston@freelancestar.com