Sergeant Ernest F. "Red" Beaugez

Ernest F. "Red" Beaugez

Sergeant Red Beaugez was shot and killed near Orange Grove, Mississippi by a suspect who had fled parole in California.

Sergeant Beaugez arrested the suspect in Ocean Springs, Mississippi on a charge of drunkenness. As the town's single peace officer, Night Marshall Ernest Beaugez was opening a cell in the Pascagoula, Mississippi jail when the suspect overpowered, disarmed, and kidnapped him. Sergeant Beaugez was found murdered by his own gun a few hours later. The suspect was apprehended following an armed robbery in another Mississippi town and was convicted of murder, and sentenced to death.

On September 9, 1954, the killer smashed the skull of Jailer J.C. Landrum, of the Hinds County Sheriff's Office, with an iron chair leg and escaped from the Hinds County Jail along with another death row inmate. Both were recaptured five days later 40 miles away after being spotted by a police helicopter. Jailer Landrum died minutes after the capture in the Jackson Hospital. The suspect was the first death row inmate executed in Mississippi's new gas chamber on March 3, 1955.

Sergeant Beaugez was a United States Army veteran of World War II and the Korean War and had served with the Ocean Springs Police Department for two years. He was survived by his wife, daughter, and sister.