Fallen Mexia police officer remembered

Mexia Police Officer Ricky Lee Ward was shot and killed Aug. 2, 1993, while investigating a convenience store shoplifting.
Limestone County District Attorney Roy DeFriend noted the anniversary of Ward’s death in an email with the message, “Lest we forget.” DeFriend, who prosecuted Ward’s killer, said he started sending out the emails several years ago. He added that he felt honored to work with law enforcement officers.
“Ricky was the first officer I was personally acquainted with who was killed in the line of duty,” he said. “Unfortunately, there have been three more added to the list, and many other officers I have had the honor of working with (men and women) who have been shot, stabbed, spit on or assaulted with everything from vehicles to fists who lived to tell the tale.”
Ward was inside the convenience store when he became aware someone was damaging his patrol car with a tire tool in the parking lot and went outside, according to Tenth Court of Appeals Court records from 2004 published by Justia Law. The suspect, who was thought to be involved in the shoplifting, fled and Ward pursued him briefly before stopping to pick up a matchbox the suspect that he thought might contain drugs, according to Officer Down Memorial Page.

While returning to his car someone behind an adjacent fence fired on him with a .380 caliber automatic pistol. A round struck Ward in the side, passing between the panels of his vest and penetrating his aorta. The shooter was reported to be a cousin of the shoplifting suspect, who was not charged in the murder.
Ward, 33, was transported to a local hospital where he died about two hours later. The shooting suspect, Heath Lamont Price, 17, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison in January 1994. However, the court granted him a new trial, and he was convicted again in July of the same year.
Price’s 2004 appeal was partially based on claims of his confession being coerced after he was arrested as the shooting suspect based on information his girlfriend provided to police. An eyewitness also told police she saw Price standing behind the fence after picking him out of a photo lineup.
The appeals court denied his appeal that included several trial procedural issues and ineffective defense counsel and affirmed his conviction and sentence. He has a parole review coming up in 2028.
Ward had been employed with the Mexia Police Department for two years. He is buried in Lake Chapel Cemetery in Freestone County.
Other law enforcement officers killed in Limestone County in recent history include Sgt. Stephen Edward Davenport of the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office who was shot May 2, 2002, while trying to serve a search warrant for stolen vehicles and Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Chad Walker, who was shot March 31, 2021, when he stopped to assist what he thought was a disabled vehicle. In Freestone County, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Damon Allen was shot during a traffic stop on Thanksgiving Day in 2017.