Patrolman Pete M. Woods

Pete M. Woods

Patrolman Pete Woods was shot and killed by an escaped convict that was a passenger in a vehicle that area police were searching for following a robbery in Mount Pleasant.

He located and stopped the vehicle approximately one block from the county courthouse. During a struggle the suspect grabbed his gun, shot him, and another officer in the chest before being subdued. The other officer recovered.

The killer, 27, was arrested hours later, along with another man, 38, and a woman, 18, by officers in Shreveport, Louisiana. The killer was a Louisiana prison inmate who escaped from a New Orleans hospital nine days earlier. On July 19, 1965, he was convicted of murder, attempted murder, and sentenced to 134 years. As he left the court room he was smiling and winking at women spectators. He was returned to Angola Prison in Louisiana to finish a term for armed robbery before being returned to Texas. He and the woman still faced two armed robbery charges in Louisiana and two in Texas.

On February 17, 1967, the suspect escaped from the same New Orleans hospital where he was being treated for an ear infection. He was quickly captured. On March 28, 1975, he along with four other inmates escaped from the Smith County Jail in Tyler Texas. On June 24, 1975, he was captured in Jasper after police surprised him in a closed drug store. He died in prison on March 26, 2010.

Patrolman Woods had served with the Carthage Police Department for six years.