On April 6, 1970, four young California Highway Patrol officers lost their lives in a four-and-a-half-minute gun battle that left four families without their husbands and fathers, and a mourning law enforcement community that still remembers them today.
The officers – Walt Frago, 23, Roger G
ore, 23, James Pence, 24, and George Alleyn, 24 – are honored with a memorial at the CHP’s Newhall-area Office on The Old Road.
The incident, which began just prior to midnight on April 5, commenced when Gore and Frago responded to reports of an individual brandishing a revolver in his vehicle. The officers initiated an enforcement stop near the present-day intersection of Magic Mountain Parkway and The Old Road after they located the vehicle, which had two occupants.
Pence and Alleyn responded soon after, but before arriving at the scene, they heard a “bitter gun battle (erupt), killing Officers Gore and Frago. When officers Pence and Alleyn arrived, they were immediately fired upon by both suspects,” read a CHP statement summarizing the incident upon its 50th-anniversary commemoration in 2020.
All four were killed in less than five minutes by the gunmen, later identified as Jack Twinning and Bobby Davis, who fled the scene after killing the officers.
For nine hours, law enforcement searched the area for the two suspects. Twinning killed himself after officers used tear gas to storm into a home the suspect had entered to hold a man hostage, while Davis was captured, stood trial and convicted on four counts of murder. Davis served a life-in-prison sentence and died in 2009 in Kern Valley Prison.
Following the investigation, high-risk stop procedures were revamped to enhance training and enforcement tactics, and new protective tools became part of CHP officers’ standard equipment.
The post 55 Years Ago: The Newhall Incident appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal. ...read more read less
