Deputy Constable George Johnson Kirk

George Johnson Kirk

Deputy Constable George Kirk was shot and killed as he and another officer responded to a train robbery. Three men had attempted to rob a train in town but were fired upon by the train crew.

When Deputy Constable Kirk and the other officer arrived at the scene they also engaged the suspects in a shootout. Deputy Constable Kirk was fatally wounded. The 23-year-old suspect who shot Deputy Constable Kirk was shot, seriously wounded, and captured. The other two were apprehended in Proctor the next day.

Deputy Kirk's killer was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years. He escaped from prison in 1914.

In March of 1915 the doctor who attended the killer and Deputy Kirk was on a train near Wilmington, North Carolina, when he heard passengers talking about an escaped murderer who had been captured near Wilmington and was in jail in nearby Southport. The doctor learned that the murderer, Jesse Walker, had escaped from the Southport Jail on January 29, 1909, just days after he shot and killed Brunswick County Sheriff Jackson Stanland. He was captured while attempting to sneak back home to see his wife and child. As the doctor learned more about the suspect and about healed gun shot wounds from the past he became convinced the suspect was not Jesse Walker but Paul Williams who killed Deputy Kirk. He went to the Southport Jail where he positively proofed the suspect was the same man. The suspect was convicted of Sheriff Stanland's murder and sentenced to 30 years. In 1919 he escaped from Central Prison in Raleigh. In 1935 he voluntarily returned to prison. On June 6, 1936, he was paroled and returned to the Oklahoma Penitentiary. He was paroled on July 24, 1944.

Deputy Constable Kirk was survived by his wife and child.