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 t's
25 years since Sgt. 'Dee' Dowell died in line
of duty
By Colleen Cason u ccason@insidevc.com
August 4, 2003
The Ventura PD dispatcher's
voice came over the police radio on a cool August
evening 25 years ago.
"1199," she said, her voice clear but
taut with tension.
For a police officer, these are numbers like no
other. They mean a fellow officer is in immediate
danger, and every cop from every agency should
head to the scene to offer aid.
For the Ventura Police Department, Aug. 7, 1978,
was a day like no other.
A popular and promising officer became the first
and only Ventura PD cop to die in the line of
duty in the agency's 137-year history.
Sgt. Darlon "Dee" Dowell had been gunned
down while making an arrest.
The events of that day changed lives and altered
careers. Some repercussions came within hours;
some played out over years.
For everyone, it shattered the illusion that big-city
violence doesn't happen in Ventura.
Dowell came by being a cop honestly. His father,
Horace, was a Santa Paula police officer who later
served as the chief in the Central Valley town
of Madera.
He came by his novel first name because his mother,
Ada Lee, was an incurable romantic. She created
names for her children that sounded like they
came from a storybook -- Theron, Milaun and Darlon.
She meant it to be pronounced "Dare-lon."
But most called him "Darlin'," and he
hated that.
He cycled through a series of nicknames, his sister
Milaun Lane recalled. But when he joined the force,
his comrades took to calling him Dee.
Dowell never wanted to be anything but a cop and
was recruited out of Fresno State by the Ventura
PD in 1969.
He had married his high school sweetheart, Mickie.
They had two children, Derrick and Deanne.
Dowell doted on his family. "If Dee was talking
to his wife on the phone, the tone of his voice
and his demeanor softened," said his longtime
partner Don Bales. "He was the sweetest,
gentlest husband and father."
Dowell also honed a reputation as a disciplined,
by-the-book cop. "He could be a pain,"
said Carl Handy, who served under Dowell's command.
"But he was my sergeant, and that's what
he was supposed to be."
Dowell found a powerful mentor
and dear friend in Capt. Bill Colston, whose father,
Frank, was a legendary Ventura probation officer.
In 1975, when he was 29, Dowell was promoted to
sergeant. Three weeks before the shooting, he
graduated from advanced police training at the
prestigious FBI Academy in Virginia.
He commanded the special investigations division,
which made arrests in major crimes.
"Our job was to bring in the bad guys,"
said Handy, a junior member of the team.
Officers believed Robert Kevin Lee fell into that
category. Two days before Dowell's shooting, the
22-year-old auto mechanic and three other men
were suspected of trying to rob a man at gunpoint
at a bank night depository. Lee needed a few hundred
dollars to pay for his pregnant wife's air fare
to visit her family in Florida.
Officers took two suspects into custody that night.
But Lee and another man escaped.
An informant supplied police with Lee's address
on North Olive Street, two short blocks from the
old Ventura PD headquarters. The Lees lived in
a little frame house at the front of the property
with their 2-year-old son, Kevin.
Officers cased the home and decided to make the
arrest Monday evening, an hour before nightfall.
Three were uniformed; the others wore royal blue
jackets with "police" spelled out in
4-inch, white letters across the back.
"We had watched the place. We had the layout
of it. We had a plan. Things just went wrong when
we got in the door," according to Handy.
Seven officers surrounded the house. Investigator
Don Bales knocked on the door and announced: "Police.
Open the door."
The television blared inside. The curtains were
drawn so officers couldn't see in.
Keith Kuhne, the other suspect in the robbery,
opened the door. Bales pointed a shotgun at him.
He put up his hands and backed up.
Lee's little boy sat on the sofa, taking this
all in.
Officer Gary McCaskill and Dee Dowell followed
Bales into the tiny living room.
Dowell had just crossed the threshold when Lee
suddenly appeared in the back hall, shirtless
and armed with a shotgun.
He shouldered the weapon and fired. One round
of the powerful 00 buckshot hit Dowell in the
back as he apparently tried to take cover.
At the station, dispatcher Nancy Skyrme monitored
the arrest. She heard the bloodcurdling scream
of Lee's son and the words "officer down."
With years of experience as a dispatcher in Dallas,
she coolly sent out the signal to squelch all
but emergency radio traffic, issued the 1199 distress
call and dispatched ambulances. She did not know
who had been hurt.
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