“I don’t really know which one shot first. I couldn’t say that,” Denny said. “I was behind him. (The shooter) said, ‘I want my gun.’ I guess he knew that we found it.”
Denny, a police officer in Sylacauga for 24 years, spoke Monday about the killing of Officer Rex Sanford. Sanford died Sept. 18, 1952, after stopping two men he saw throw a handgun from their car.
He and Police Chief Sanford “S.S.” Perryman were both killed in the line of duty, the only two in the city’s history. Perryman was fatally shot in 1914.
City officials scheduled a ceremony for 11 a.m. Wednesday at City Hall to honor all fallen officers, locally and nationally. The ceremony was planned to recognize National Police Week.
Officer Rex A. Sanford
Sanford was a college student and a World War II veteran. He took a job with the police department during his break between classes.
On the day of his murder, Sanford and fellow first-year officer Denny went to the Forks Drive-In on the outskirts of the city, according to news reports.
“We ran up on this car,” Denny said. “We got to them and I guess they recognized the police car. They threw something out into the open grass. We didn’t think much about it at the time.”
Denny said the car drove off from the area. He and Sanford continued their rounds but returned to the same spot later.
“I told Rex, ‘Let’s see what they threw out, if it was a bottle of liquor or something,’” he said. “Turned out there was a little gun in there. Apparently that’s what they threw out.”
The two officers came back to the area again around 4 a.m. Denny said the same vehicle and the same two men from earlier had returned.
He said one of the two men was Joseph Pate, the man later convicted of Sanford’s murder. Denny and Sanford both stepped out of their car.
“I was moving a little faster than he was, I was going ahead,” he said. “(Sanford) tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Let me go first,’ so I let him go ahead. We were just about a car length distance away.”
“I never did see the gun; I don’t guess he did either. Not the gun he got killed with.”
Denny said he and Sanford put the gun they found earlier in their car’s glove compartment. But Sanford told Pate he would have to go to police headquarters to pick it up.
An argument started and Sanford told Denny to get Pate’s gun out of the glove compartment.
“That’s when the shooting started,” Denny said. “It’s just my idea that (Pate) shot first because I don’t think Rex would have done something like that.”
A news report stated Sanford was shot three times and also fired three rounds from his gun. Denny said he returned fire, with the same gun the two men were looking for and then with his own weapon.
Sanford died four hours later in the Sylacauga hospital. He was 26 years old and left behind a wife and young son.
Pate was later arrested and convicted for the murder. He was sentenced to life in prison but only served 10 years and seven months. The man who was with Pate was not charged.
Denny described Sanford as a kind, family man who did not lose his temper easily. He said his family was close with Sanford’s family.
“We were good friends, his wife and my wife were good friends,” Denny said. “We visited one another and we went out to eat together. We would mostly eat when we visited one another. They were good people.”
Chief Sanford S. Perryman
Perryman died from wounds he received in a gun duel on May 1, 1914, according to the May 2 Talladega Daily Home report. The report stated the shooting happened when Perryman tried to stop C.K. “Buster” Sorrell.
It stated Perryman believed Sorrell, a pool hall owner, was transporting whiskey.
Sorrell died from gunshot wounds that night. Authorities transported Perryman to a Birmingham hospital where he succumbed to his injuries the next day.
The report described both men as “members of prominent families,” and they were buried six plots apart in Marble City Cemetery.
His great-nephew, Lee Perryman of the Associated Press, researched Sanford Perryman’s history. He stated in an e-mail he was surprised to discover Sanford was the only member of his family to attend college.
"Sanford grew up in Fayetteville as one of eight children,” he stated. “His father James was a well-known farmer and veterinarian who had moved to the area with his parents in 1836. Only three of Sanford's siblings had children, and descendants of only two are alive today.”
He added Sanford Perryman lived in Texas following his graduation from the University of Arkansas, but he returned to Alabama in 1908 after his father’s death. Perryman was named Sylacauga’s chief of police in 1910.
Perryman received credit for being a “hero” before he became the city’s police chief. While Perryman was living in Groveton, Texas, N.H. Phillips, the public schools superintendent, recognized Perryman in a letter for his “daring exploits.”
The letter stated he stopped a runaway horse buggy carrying a child and, on the same day, put out a fire on the stage of a crowded opera house.
“Someone announced from the stage, ‘Mr. Perryman, hero for the second time today,’ and the audience gave unstinted applause,” it stated.
Both Perryman and Sanford had their names engraved on The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Sylacauga Police Capt. Chris Carden has studied the entire department’s history. Carden, whose grandfather Hubert “Babe” Carden also worked for the police department, displayed several pictures and artifacts from that history in his office.
One of the pictures was a team photograph of the 1898 Arkansas football team, featuring Sanford Perryman.
“That’s the team picture, and that’s him,” Carden pointed out.
Carden also displayed a picture of Rex Sanford’s widow and son receiving a check after his death. He said he believes more needs to be done to honor the officers killed while serving the public.
“There were police officers for this city, and they died on these streets,” he said. “Until the police department started doing a memorial, you would be hard-pressed to find anybody that knew anything about that. They are heroes.”
Carden also noted the good fortune the police department has had since the death of Sanford.
“We haven’t had a police officer killed in the line of duty since 1952,” he said. “Hopefully, we never will again.”
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