Texas Department of Criminal Justice - Correctional Institutions Division, Texas
End of Watch: Friday, September 17, 1971
Age: 36
Tour of Duty: 2 years, 3 months
Badge Number: Not available
Cause of Death: Aircraft accident
Date of Incident: September 17, 1971
Weapon Used: Not available
Suspect Info: Not available
Major George A. May was killed when his plane crashed while transporting an escaped inmate from Oregon to Texas.
Major May and his co-pilot, Major Robert A. Arrington, flew a Texas Department of Corrections airplane to Oregon to pick up an inmate who escaped from a Texas prison on March 31, 1970 and was captured in Oregon. The officers stopped in Pueblo, Colorado, back to Huntsville, Texas. On the morning of September 17, 1971, the TDC plane left the airport and crashed around 9:04 a.m., 15-25 miles southwest of Fowler in Pueblo County, Colorado. All three men were killed. The airplane flew into a late summer storm that dropped the earliest snowfall in the Pueblo area since record-keeping in 1888. Search planes were delayed because of low visibility.
Major May served with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice - Correctional Institutions Division for over two years. He was survived by his wife.