Trooper was ‘the definition of a gentleman’
State trooper is first since 2008 to die in a shooting incident
Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Damon Allen, who was killed during a traffic stop Thanksgiving Day — the suspect in the shooting was caught five hours later in Waller County — is remembered as a man who got into law enforcement because he wanted to help people.
Trooper Damon Allen went into law enforcement to help people.
He wanted to be “the guy that people turned to when they needed help,” said Brian Bell, Mexia’s chief of police who had known Allen for more than a decade before the trooper was shot and killed Thanksgiving Day during a traffic stop on Interstate 45.
“That’s just the way he was built,” Bell said.
Allen, 41, died after being shot near Fairfield in Freestone County by a man later identified by police as Dabrett Black, 32, of Lindale.
The Texas Department of Public Safety said Thursday that “preliminary information” indicated Allen was shot as he returned to his patrol vehicle. Black allegedly fled the scene and was captured in Waller County northwest of Houston, nearly five hours after a massive manhunt for him was announced by Texas
authorities. He was charged Friday with capital murder.
Gov. Greg Abbott ordered that Texas flags at DPS facilities be lowered to half-staff across the state. Flags also flew at half-staff in Mexia and Limestone County.
Allen is the first trooper to die in a shooting incident since 2008, according to the DPS. But his death comes only a few weeks after another DPS trooper, Thomas Nipper, died after being struck by a pickup truck during a traffic stop on Interstate 35 in Temple.
“I think everybody is still trying to process this and how needless this really is,” said Randy Barnes, a retired DPS sergeant who was Allen’s supervisor early in the trooper’s career. Barnes used to go out on “check rides” with the new troopers to observe them in action, he said.
“Damon was one of those guys that I actually looked forward to going out and riding with,” he said. “He was funny, but he did his job and he did it well. From the very start, he just knew how to do his job.”
‘Fair and polite’
Allen grew up around Mexia and was a 15-year veteran of the DPS highway patrol.
He married his high school sweetheart, Kasey Allen, in 1993 and they had four children: daughters Chelsea Quinn and Kaitlyn Allen, both 23; 18-yearold son Cameron Allen; and daughter Madison Allen, 8.
“He was the definition of a gentleman,” Bell said. “He was fair and polite with everyone he came in contact with. He treated everyone like they were a friend.”
Barnes, his former supervisor, said it’s not always easy for a trooper to return to his hometown straight out of recruit school — it can be difficult to enforce the law in a place where they know almost everyone.
“But he was a rare type of guy,” Barnes said. “He just had such a strong character and a lot of integrity. We knew that if he came back to Mexia, there weren’t going to be any issues.”
Allen was stationed at Groesbeck at the time of his death.
Allen loved going to Galveston to spend time on the beach, Bell said. He also loved driving his Jeep, and he’d play golf whenever he got the chance.
“I’d say he was a family man first and a friend second, and a cop third, probably,” Bell said.
In August, Allen was given a DPS Lifesaving Award for saving a Wortham man’s life. When a woman called 911 because her husband was having a heart attack, Allen overheard the call and responded, then gave the man CPR for several minutes before medical responders arrived.
Afterward, Allen didn’t even mention it to his closest friends, Bell said.
“As close as we were, I had to hear about that from somebody else,” he said.
‘Selfless sacrifice’
In a statement released Thursday, DPS Director Steven McCraw praised Allen for his “selfless sacrifice on Thanksgiving Day.” Abbott called Allen’s killing “callous” and “heinous.”
“The killer will face justice, and the State of Texas will continue to offer our unwavering support for the men and women in law enforcement who keep our communities safe,” Abbott said in a statement.
Black was being held in the Brazos County jail in Bryan.
He apparently fled the shooting in a gray 2012 Chevrolet Malibu, and authorities caught up with him in Waller County, where they fired some shots at him. He fled on foot and authorities followed him for more than an hour. He finally was detained after a police dog found him hiding among hay bales in a field.
The Thursday traffic stop was not Black’s first violent encounter with law enforcement.
Smith County Court records show that Black was indicted by a grand jury last month for aggravated assault against a public servant and evading arrest after ramming his car into a police cruiser in July. He was charged in 2015 with assault on a public servant after trying to take an officer’s weapon, but the charge was dismissed, court records show.
He also was charged in Anderson County in East Texas with evading arrest.
His attorney in the Smith County cases could not be reached for comment, and his family did not respond to calls for comment Friday.
Help for his family
Support rolled in Friday for Allen’s family. The nonprofit 100 Club pledged $20,000 to Allen’s wife and children. Executive director Rick Hartley said the group, which supports dependents of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty, will meet with the family to figure out how to “wipe out their debt” and send Allen’s children to college.
A family friend started an online fundraiser that had raised more than $2,000 Friday afternoon at https://myevent.com/ DPSDAMONALLEN.
Law enforcement officers know that any routine traffic stop can turn deadly, Barnes said, but he believes the risk to their lives is greater now than ever before.
“We would have meetings and talk about officer safety all the time,” he said. “We’d go over those scenarios. And you just pray that it never, ever happens — but it does, and you know that’s reality.”
Before he became a state trooper in 2002, Allen worked as a correctional officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
“He’d be helping people whether or not he wore a badge, but that was the venue that called him,” Bell said. “He was doing what he loved, and that was protecting people.”