1966 - Sheriff Walter Meek Killed

On Saturday morning, November 26, 1966, R. T. "Tucker" Daniel strolled into the office of the Johnson County Sheriff to visit his life-long friend Sheriff Walter E. Meek. Meek, only 25 years of age and the youngest sheriff in Kentucky, had been in office less than 11 months.

While Daniel was visiting, Meek received telephone call from a lady asking that he serve a lunacy warrant on 34 year old Jimmy Ward. Ward had apparently barricaded himself inside a house on the hillside above Kentucky Route 40 overlooking the Mayo farm just west of the Paintsville city limits.

Meek's's deputy, Curt DeLong, was in the office at the time. Meek asked DeLong and his friend Tucker Daniel to come along with him. It was a routine matter, even though Meek had been told that Ward had a shotgun. The young sheriff believed that he could avoid trouble.

Ward was later described as a man whom no one really knew. He had been a patient in Eastern State Hospital twice for mental illness but had been released under the provisions of state laws existing at the time.

Daniel was instructed to wait in the car at the foot of the hill as Sheriff Meek and Deputy DeLong approached the ramshackle house on the side of the hill where Ward was reported to be. Within minutes Daniel heard the blast of a shotgun. He saw both Meek and DeLong fall to the ground.

Rushing up the hill Daniel saw that his young friend Walter Meek was beyond help. He had taken a shotgun blast to the head. DeLong was wounded but could talk. Daniel helped him down the hill and stopped a passing car to send for assistance and an ambulance.

Within minutes, it seemed, the place was swarming with city and state police and hundreds of concerned and curious bystanders. The newly opened U. S. 23 By-Pass, as it was called then, which traversed the former Mayo Farm, was lined with cars.

As the people watched from a distance, Deputy DeLong was rushed to Paintsville Hospital where he would eventually recover.

When police finally entered the house they found that Jimmy Ward had killed himself with his own shotgun after firing at the Sheriff and his deputy. Young Sheriff Walter Meek was dead and the man whom no one knew...the man who, as the Paintsville Herald observed, "had spent all of his life practically unknown had blasted himself into a few moments of prominence."

Meek's wife, Faye, was appointed on December 8, 1966, to serve as sheriff in her husband's place until the next regular election.

At the time of Meek;s death there was speculation, particularly among some of Meek's family and friends, that the Sheriff had been "set up” by one or more local bootleggers because of his strong stance against illegal alcohol sales. One aspect of this speculation maintained that Jimmy Ward did not commit suicide (since a second shot was not heard by those present, most notably Tucker Daniel) but was killed earlier by the same person or persons who killed Sheriff Meek.

These speculations were not made public at the time nor were they ever substantiated.

Commenting on the incident, a physician at Eastern State Hospital speculated that had there been some local mental health center available - someone with whom Ward could have talked - the tragedy might have been avoided. But there was no such center...at least not yet.

Johnson County Sheriff Walter Meek was dead. Nothing could change that. He had lead the ticket in November 1965 and was only the second Democrat ever elected sheriff in Johnson County in the Twentieth Century. He was also the first sheriff in the county to be killed in the line of duty.

Meek had campaigned, saying, "The essence of civilized society is law enforcement. Men can only live together in peace if their conduct is regulated by a code of laws."

A few months following Meek's death a statewide system of regional mental health centers was established in Kentucky with one to serve the five counties of the Big Sandy Valley. Paintsville native Dan B. Howard was largely responsible for their funding and their administration.

For Jimmy Ward and his victim Sheriff Walter Meek, however, they came too late.

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