Ptlm. William T. Speight 1911-1949 |
Bill Speight was born November 12, 1911, in Wellington, Texas, and
spent most of his younger years in the Texas panhandle. He graduated from high school in Tahoka, Texas, and later moved to Las Vegas, New
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| and armed with a shotgun. Bill knew the subject personally
and when he approached the front door to establish communication, the suspect stepped out onto the front porch and pointed his shotgun at Bill.
The young officer drew his .45 service revolver from his holster and both men fired simultaneously.
Bill’s bullet entered the suspect’s chest, and killed him instantly; Bill was struck in his leg by a load of
birdshot. He was transported to the hospital emergency room, but doctors were unable to remove all of the
pellets and for the rest of his life, the remaining pellets would move around inside his leg and caused him to limp.
He was periodically hospitalized for further treatment due to pain caused by the pellets. For the rest of his days, Bill was haunted by the sadness of taking the life of another. After the shooting incident, he was transferred to Tucumcari. He resigned from the state police in March of 1942 over a disagreement with Chief Summers, but was reinstated in May 1942 and again assigned to Alamogordo. He resigned once more, in December 1943, to join the U. S. Army. He served in the military until 1945, after which he was reinstated in the state police and once again assigned to Alamogordo. One night in 1947, Bill was assisting the U. S. Border Patrol in the Carrizozo area with the apprehension of undocumented immigrants who had stowed away on a freight train. As he was chasing one of the subjects on top of a train car, his leg that had been injured by the shotgun pellets gave out, causing him to fall off of the train. He sustained a broken neck and spinal injuries. Bill eventually returned to work, but this injury caused him to suffer periodic blackouts throughout the rest of his life. He was able to keep his blackout problem a secret from the department until he was on patrol and suffered a loss of consciousness, which caused him to wreck his patrol unit into a concrete embankment. The blackout problem surfaced during the investigation. The department had no sick leave or duty injury leave, so Chief Beasley kept him on the payroll as a commissioned officer, but would not issue him another patrol car. For the rest of his career, he performed all his duties from his personal car. One of Bill’s responsibilities was to maintain a generator for an FCC radio tower on Wolford Mountain near Cloudcroft, New Mexico. The generator was utilized to power a rotating beacon on top of a radio tower for air traffic safety. Bill was only able to drive his car a portion of the way up to the tower, and had to walk the remainder. On February 21, 1949, he was reported overdue from tending to his duties at the tower and a search of the area located his car at the base of Wolford Mountain. On February 24th, searchers following the trail to the generator found Bill’s body lying face down under a tree. Official reports indicated he died of exposure, perhaps after suffering another blackout. Bill was preceded in death by his wife and was survived by one daughter. He was buried in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
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