A city advisory board has finally 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.

Lawrence’s Historic Resources Commission on Thursday signed off, with just a few minor tweaks still to be made to the markers.

The Lawrence City Commission will have the final vote on the markers during a meeting in the near future.

The markers’ installation will cost the city less than $100 because a private donor has agreed to pay for the markers themselves, according to the meeting agenda.

The markers show photographs of the two young men and share summaries of the circumstances of their deaths written by Bill Tuttle. They have been in the works for several years.

The markers will be 18-by-24-inch panels on pedestals.

Chris Rice, Nick’s brother, was present via Zoom — again — for Thursday’s discussion. He had told the board in November that he hoped he’d live long enough to see the marker placed.

HRC members on Thursday named a few final changes to be made, particularly regarding the marker for Nick Rice. His age is incorrectly listed as 19, and they want to see his shooter named, as Dowdell’s shooter is named on the marker in his honor.

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.

Dennis Domer, a Lawrence historian, attended the meeting via Zoom and said he’d conducted interviews with a detective who was certain the shooter had been Stroud.

“I think it’s injustice to the memory of Nick Rice not to name his killer,” Domer said.

HRC Chair Brenna Buchanan agreed.

“I think there’s enough historic accounts of this, and I think everybody is on the same page. There is no doubt that Stroud was the one who shot your brother,” she told Chris Rice, “and I think it’s only fair if we name one, we should name both.”

The vote was unanimous in favor of the markers with the last few modifications still to be made. The HRC will not need to vote on the markers again, and final versions will go to the Lawrence City Commission for consideration.

Background

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.”

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.

Historic markers

Here’s a look at the latest mockups of the markers:

20260115-Dowdell-marker-r

20260115-Rice-marker

— Conner Mitchell, reporter emeritus, contributed to this article.

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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