Corporal Thomas Hanson, 37, was shot and killed at about 1:45 a.m. on Saturday, December 29, 1973, when he interrupted an armed robbery at a 7-11 store at Ninth and Grand. He and his partner, Officer James Askey, had stopped for Hanson to buy a carton of milk. Hanson went inside while Askey remained in their patrol car. Unbeknownst to them, Bernard Meehan, 19, was hiding in the corner of the store. Askey noticed him when he started to walk up to the officer by the checkout counter. Coming up behind Hanson, Meehan fired one round as Hanson began turning toward him. Seeing what had happened, Askey jumped from the cruiser and fired two rounds at Meehan just seconds after Hanson fell to the floor. Meehan staggered toward the door with his gun still in his hand. As he turned toward Askey, Meehan was shot again and fell to the floor in front of the magazine display.
Hanson was rushed to Parkview Episcopal Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m. Meehan arrived at the hospital after Hanson and died three hours later. Deputy Coroner Dr. John Howe said that the postmortem examination indicated that Hanson was killed by a .22-caliber bullet that entered a lung, severed a large blood vessel, then entered the other lung and lodged in the torso. Police spokesman John Ercul said that all three of Askey’s shots struck Meehan. Both store clerks were laying on the floor behind the counter as Meehan had told them to do. Investigators determined that another subject was involved and they located him about 20 hours after the shooting. He was identified as Charles D. Salazar, 17, who had dropped out of Centennial High School. Salazar was jailed and indicted for murder. He was said to have been the driver of the get-away car. His bond was set at $50,000 by District Judge Matt Kikel, but no further information was found on Salazar’s case.
Thomas Martin Hanson was born September 19, 1936, in Delta. His father, Harold Hanson, served with the Delta Police Department for 18 years, retiring as the Chief of Police. Corporal Hanson served in the National Guard from May 1953 to June 1959 and worked in Uravan and Montrose before joining the Delta Police Department in November 1962, where he stayed for nearly four years before leaving to work in a machine shop. He joined the Pueblo Police Department on October 25, 1966, and was promoted to Corporal on January 12, 1972. He was survived by his wife Karen S. Hanson of Pueblo and five children, Kim Lori, Kirby Leigh and Jamie Jo Hanson, all of Delta; and Thomas Kelly and Zorrin Scott Hanson of the family home in Pueblo; his mother Mrs. Frances G. Hanson of Pueblo and brother James of Delta. Services were held on December 31 at the McCarthy Funeral Home with burial following at Roselawn cemetery. More than 400 people attended, half of which were police officers.
On January 2, 1974, Chief Bud Willoughby announced that the department’s recently renovated training facility had been named Hanson Hall in memory of Corporal Thomas Martin Hanson. He said that each new officer, and officers undergoing in-service training, will recognize that a fellow officer had laid down his life for the people of Pueblo. A plaque acknowledging this was hung in the training academy.
EOW: 29 Dec 1973
Cause of Death: Gunfire