Ceremony marks 31st anniversary of trooper’s death

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

In what has become an annual ritual for 31 years, members of the law-enforcement community and friends gathered at the I-10 Aucilla off ramp last week to honor one of their own: Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) Trooper Jimmy Fulford.
If remembering keeps souls alive and forgetfulness is the true mark of death, as Mexican folklore holds, Fulford is in no danger of truly dying, despite his untimely death in a bomb explosion in 1992.
On Wednesday, Feb. 1 – the 31st anniversary of his death – members of the FHP, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and other first responders, both active and retired, gathered at the bombsite to mark the occasion and remember Fulford.
Following a brief ceremony that included a prayer and words of remembrance, those gathered stood around informally and told stories about Fulford, praising his attributes as a friend and officer, and recalling the fateful day when he was killed.
Bud Wheeler, formerly with the FHP Auxiliary, a professionally trained all-volunteer organization that provides direct assistance and operational support to troopers, recalled that he was scheduled to ride with Fulford on the fateful day.
The only reason that he had been spared the same fate, Wheeler said, was because he had attended an antique car show in Georgia and had arrived back home late, causing him to just miss the ride.
“I’m the luckiest man alive,” Wheeler said, recalling that day.
Others remembered arriving on the scene of the bomb explosion minutes after the fact and spoke of the horror of what they had witnessed.
Retired FHP Lieutenant B.J. Tinney, who was Fulford’s supervisor and friend, and who has organized the commemorative ceremonies every year since, told of a dream shortly after Fulford’s death. In the dream, Tinney said, he had asked Fulford if he had felt anything in the explosion, and the latter had told him he had felt nothing. Which had put him a little at peace, Tinney said about himself.
Those gathered engaged in what-if scenarios, wondering how it might have been if Fulford hadn’t worked that day, or gotten onto the interstate a few minutes later, or hadn’t stopped the speeding vehicle. Their conclusion, however, was that ultimately one’s days were numbered, and it had simply been Fulfords time.
They consoled themselves with the thought that by his action, Fulford had saved the lives of the intended victims and anyone else in the vicinity, had the bomb gone off at its intended location. And they expressed satisfaction that the perpetrator of the crime had finally gotten his just deserves, if 22 years after the fact.
They wished Fulford peace in the afterlife, and humorously expressed the hope that he would have plenty of deer and turkey to hunt there, either in recognition of his once hunting prowess or their own wished-for paradise.
Fulford, then 35, was killed instantly on Feb. 1, 1992, when a pipe bomb inside a vehicle that he stopped for speeding exploded. The bomb, inside a gift-wrapped box in the trunk of the car, was intended to silence two women in Marianna whom the state planned to call as witnesses to testify in a Broward County murder trial.
It was Fulford’s misfortune to stop a westbound Mitsubishi Galant doing 85 mph on the fateful Saturday. The vehicle, as it turned out, was a rental out of South Florida, and neither the driver nor the passenger had valid driver’s licenses.
After arresting the driver and having him transported to the county jail (the passenger chose to accompany his friend to the jail) Fulford decided to inventory the impounded vehicle’s contents while waiting for the tow truck to arrive.
Unbeknownst to him, however, the gift-wrapped box carried a microwave with a bomb that was rigged to explode upon opening.
Court testimony later established that Paul Howell, a former U.S. Army technician and member of a Jamaican drug ring in South Florida, had fashioned the bomb with his brother Patrick and paid the driver $200 to transport the gift box to Marianna.
Fulford was buried with honors in Madison County, where he had been born and raised. In 2014, the state formally dedicated the portion of I-10 between the Aucilla and Monticello exits as the “Trooper James Herbert Fulford Jr. Memorial Highway.”
Paul Howell, meanwhile, was convicted of first-degree murder by a Jefferson County jury in 1995 and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in February 2014.
His brother, Patrick Howell, also convicted of first-degree murder, was given a life sentence. And Lester Watson, the driver of the rented Mitsubishi, received a 40-year prison sentence.