Lawrence city commissioners on Tuesday approved historic markers to pay tribute to Rick “Tiger” Dowdell and Nick Rice, teens who were shot and killed by Lawrence police officers in 1970, despite objections from the police chief.
Dowdell, 19, and Nick Rice, 18, were killed in a four-day span marking one of the more tumultuous periods in Lawrence’s history, which would later come to be known as the “Days of Rage.” Police and the local newspaper spread disinformation widely in the aftermath.
Lynne Braddock Zollner, historic resources administrator for the city, presented to city commissioners about the markers, which at this point essentially have a history of their own. The markers have been in the works since 2020.
Chris Rice, the brother of Nick Rice, initiated the request for the markers. He told the Historic Resources Commission in November that he hoped he’d live long enough to see the markers placed.
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The markers show photographs of the two young men and share summaries of the circumstances of their deaths written by Bill Tuttle. Zollner said she believed the text had been “extremely vetted.” They have been discussed in numerous public meetings over the last few years.
Read more background on the shootings below.
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Zollner told commissioners that Lawrence Police Chief Rich Lockhart “has some concerns about the validity of some of the statements made on the marker for Nick Rice. And so he would like for us to look at this as either maybe postponing your final vote on the final decision for the markers, or looking at the marker approval in such a way that he would have time to verify those facts that are proposed for the Rice marker.”
However, “It’s very well documented with many, many footnotes on the statements for if the chief wants to verify that will be easy if he gets those same documents to be able to look at those and see where the information came from,” Zollner said.
Though some in the community have argued it was unclear who shot Nick Rice, historical records leave no question that then-Lawrence police Officer Jimmy Joe Stroud admitted to firing his personal rifle in Nick’s direction, and it was a bullet from Stroud’s rifle that killed Nick. Members of the Historic Resources Commission last month emphasized the need to include the shooter’s name on the marker.
Commissioner Kristine Polian asked Lockhart to come speak to the commissioners. Lockhart said that throughout the process, the police department had not been asked to be a part of it, and he was asking for a pause to provide some input. He also said he thought the text on the markers did not align with the Lawrence Times in-depth series about the shootings.
Contacted in 2021, Stroud, at the time nearly 80, told a Lawrence Times reporter he had “no idea” if he shot and killed Nick Rice, and repeatedly told a reporter that there was no evidence he was the officer who shot Nick or that the bullet that killed Nick came from his gun — even though the KBI confirmed that the spent bullet found at the scene came from Stroud’s carbine. Stroud maintained this position after the reporter told him that the KBI file showed a straight line from where Stroud was stationed that night to where Nick was shot and killed.
Commissioners heard from Chris Rice and some community members during public comment Tuesday.
“They’ve been waiting for 56 years for some kind of justice out of this, these two unauthorized shootings, killings of young men by the police — one of them purposefully, one of them accidentally, but they were still shootings by the police,” local historian Kerry Altenbernd said of the Dowdell and Rice families.
“I, too, lived during these moments that this happened in Lawrence, Kansas, and I really stand with Kerry. A lot of stuff was whitewashed. A lot of stuff has been removed, has been changed,” Janine Colter, president of Lawrence KS Juneteenth, told commissioners. “… I think that the words that are being used are appropriate at the time that this was all going on and that everything should be listed.”
Vice Mayor Mike Courtney said as the commission’s discussion began that he was “happy to go forward.” Commissioner Mike Dever also said he believed the markers had gone through a lot of work and he, too, was OK with moving forward.
Mayor Brad Finkeldei said he agreed with the language on the marker, but he said he’d be OK with Lockhart’s request to pause to make sure the text was accurate.
Polian said that “you bet” she believed there was whitewashing of the shootings. “But I would like to hear from everybody,” she said. “I don’t think it’s going to hurt anything, but with that said, I still very much want to honor these two gentlemen.”
Commissioner Amber Sellers said she believed the language of the markers was fitting because it was the truth. She said she didn’t see it as painting a bad picture of an officer.
“When I read this, it was a lot, and to someone who does not have a discerning eye and a discerning thought, would think that … this was probably a bunch of liberal bullshit, and it’s not,” Sellers said. “I mean, this has so much history in this marker that a lot of folks who even live here in Lawrence don’t even know about.”
The item had been on the commission’s consent agenda, a list of items that are generally considered routine and approved with one motion, but it was moved to the regular agenda for discussion prior to the meeting.
The commission ultimately voted unanimously to approve the markers, though Polian said that “I don’t love it.”
The markers will be 18-by-24-inch panels on pedestals. The markers and their installation will cost the city less than $100 because a private donor has agreed to pay for the markers themselves.
The marker for Rice will go in a grassy area in front of the new water towers on Oread Avenue, and the marker for Dowdell will go near 11th and New Hampshire streets.
Background
Using hundreds of pages of state and federal investigatory records, we in 2021 and 2022 wrote expansive series on Rice and Dowdell’s killings. Those series will be featured on the Watkins Museum of History’s website linked with the QR codes on the markers.
Dowdell was killed by Officer William Garrett on July 16, 1970, shot in the back of the head while running down an alleyway near the 900 block of New Hampshire Street. Gunfire rang out in Lawrence earlier in the evening; Dowdell and his friend were traveling in a yellow Volkswagen and were followed by Garrett and his partner Kennard Avey, ostensibly suspected of being part of the gunfire.
The Volkswagen ran two stop signs and drove up on a curb before Dowdell exited the passenger’s side and sprinted down the alleyway. Exactly what happened in that alleyway is likely lost to history — but Garrett fired a warning shot, Dowdell allegedly returned fire, and then Garrett fired three more shots, one striking the teenage activist in the back of the head, killing him instantly.
Lawrence erupted in protests following Dowdell’s death. And though a sense of calm seemed to have returned to the city by July 20, Rice — a KU student accompanied by his fiancée of just two days and a mutual friend — came to Lawrence to pay a traffic ticket and would not return home.
After finding the traffic court closed for the night, the three decided to hang around Lawrence, playing pinball at a dive bar in the location that is now the Oread Hotel. A crowd grew outside of the bar, though, and the evening soon turned deadly. Rice was shot in the back of the neck that night by a bullet fired from the carbine rifle of Stroud as police unleashed tear gas in a sea of chaos that enveloped the Oread Neighborhood.
Stroud, just hours later, would essentially confess to shooting Rice — first telling a group of local officials at the Douglas County Courthouse that he “thought he had shot someone,” and later asking the assistant county attorney and superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol, “Am I to be charged with shooting the man?”
Yet in the days and weeks following, the Lawrence Police Department and area officials launched a disinformation campaign, echoed broadly by the legacy newspaper in town, about Rice and the events of that evening — sowing public doubt regarding whether police were actually responsible for the teen’s death and helping propagate an impossible theory that Rice was shot by a mysterious sniper.
Neither Stroud nor Garrett faced legal consequences for their roles in the killings, and though Garrett left Lawrence shortly after Dowdell’s killing, Stroud worked for LPD for another seven years.
Here’s a look at the markers as presented to the commission:
20260210-dowdell-marker-r20260210-rice-marker-r
— Conner Mitchell, reporter emeritus, contributed to this article.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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