April Fool’s Day 70 years ago dawned bright and became a gloriously sunny day.

Alva Jackson came home from his shift that morning at 6:30 a.m., as usual, and ate his supper when most people ate their breakfast, according to an article from the April 15, 1955, Tri-City Herald. It was a change of shift day so he returned to work at 3 p.m.

But Jackson never came home after that shift to his wife and two elementary-school age girls. 

Alva Mead Jackson, a 38-year-old patrolman with the Pasco Police Department, was shot six times by a pistol-packing teen who had already shot his own father and grandfather on April 1, 1955. 

Alva Jackson

Jackson was the first and only Pasco police officer to be killed in the line of duty.

Pasco shootout

Confronting the youth on a Pasco street, Jackson chose not to draw his police pistol strapped to his side, trying instead to talk the youth into dropping his weapon and surrendering.

The boy did not and let loose with a barrage of bullets, striking Jackson multiple times.

Jackson died at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Pasco, but not before disarming and capturing the youth despite his wounds.

The shooting spree began when an intoxicated Richard “Dickie” Petersen began arguing over his drinking with his father at their home at 1126 E. Lewis St., leading the youth to arm himself with a rifle and pistol.

Then the rampage began.

First, the boy fired at a neighbor in the courtyard.

He missed.

Living in the same collection of homes near North Main Avenue was Petersen’s grandfather. The commotion drew him outside. The teenager fired at his grandfather three times with the rifle. He was hit once in the leg.

The boy re-entered the home he shared with his father, yelled at him, firing again and hitting the older Petersen in the hip. The teen then ran outside, leaped into the family car and tried starting it without success.

When he saw his father stagger outside and try to reach a nearby telephone booth, the young Petersen fired again, striking his father in the back. He collapsed to the ground.

Discarding the rifle but still armed with a .22-caliber gun, Petersen fled on foot. Pasco police Chief Al McKibbin and his three on-duty officers responded to the shootings. 

A Franklin County Sheriff's deputy, Walt Brinke, joined in the hunt with Pasco police Detective Ken Hutton, Patrolman Bob McMillan and Jackson.

Pursuing the trail of events were Tri-City Herald reporter Ron Taylor, and Columbia Basin News reporter/photographer Jim Spoerhase. The Herald at the time was an afternoon daily, and the Columbia Basin News was a morning daily in the Tri-Cities. It ceased to publish in 1964.

The front page of the Tri-City Herald on April 15, 1955, featured multiple stories about the Pasco officer killed in the line of duty.

| Courtesy NewsBank archives

The armed youth returned to the courtyard area where the shooting began, and neighbors called police.

Jackson arrived and pursued him in the direction he was told the boy had fled. Rounding a corner, the officer found himself staring at the teen’s gun. He did not unholster his own weapon. Instead, he approached the youth, trying to talk him down. 

Instead, Petersen fired multiple times, shooting Jackson twice in the face and four times in his body.

Despite his wounds, Jackson kept coming, grabbing the young gunman, and disarming him of both the gun and a switchblade knife before pinning him against a car. 

Brinke came upon the scene and helped subdue Petersen until other officers arrived.

Jackson was driven to the hospital where he died two hours later. The teen’s father died two weeks later from his wounds.

Jail time

Petersen pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 60 years in prison. He was sent to the state penitentiary in Walla Walla where he continued to receive visits from his family. On one of these visits in 1958, he took his mother hostage in the visitor’s room in an escape attempt with two other prisoners, according to the Tri-City Herald. Petersen was shot and not expected to live – but he did. A second prisoner was shot and killed.

Petersen was paroled in 1965 and later that year driving in Spokane he struck and killed a 44-year-old pedestrian, throwing him 90 feet. He was convicted of negligent driving. In 1966, he was returned to prison for parole violation when a police officer found him drunk in his car.

Petersen was released from jail in 1970, got sober and married, according to a 2015 Tri-City Herald article. He died in 2005 in Wenatchee of Hepatitis C, which doctors think he may have contracted during a blood transfusion when he was shot.

Remembering Jackson

Jackson, when killed, was earning not quite $12 a day as a patrolman. He had been a Pasco police officer for five years. Before coming to Pasco, he was a patrolman for two years with the Hood River Police Department in Oregon.

Officers killed in Washington in the line of duty are memorialized at the Law Enforcement Memorial in Olympia and are recipients of the state’s Law Enforcement Medal of Honor. 

Jackson also was a World War II veteran who served for five years in the Pacific theater with a military police unit. He is buried at City View Cemetery in Pasco.

Gale Metcalf of Kennewick is a lifelong Tri-Citian, retired Tri-City Herald employee and volunteer for the East Benton County Historical Museum. He writes the monthly history column.