Jimmy Fulford honored

Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

About two dozen or more law-enforcement officers and others gathered on Monday afternoon, Feb. 1, at the memorial site of Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) Trooper Jimmy H. Fulford off I-10 to pay tribute to one of their own who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty.
The gathering at the memorial, located at mile marker 233 on I-10 (just off the Aucilla exit ramp), was to commemorate the 29th anniversary of the death of Fulford, who was killed in the same spot by a pipe bomb in Feb. 1, 1992.
Sheriff Mac McNeill, who attended the ceremony, said the event was a testament to Fulford and the impact that he had had on his fellow officers, that active and retired troopers would still gather annually to honor him so many years later.
“People are usually forgotten quickly,” McNeill said. “It speaks volumes of the dedication of the men who served with him that they keep coming together to honor him, and it speaks volumes of Fulford that he had such an impact on them.”
The gathering, held despite the day’s cold and blustery weather, included an opening prayer, the reading of a Psalm and a recording of Fulford singing at the Greenville Baptist Church where he had been a deacon. The attendees afterwards talked about the day that Fulford was killed and reminisced about his qualities and contributions to the FHP and community in general.
Fulford was 35 at the time of his death. Had he lived, he would have been 65 this May.
The commemorative service at the memorial is an annual event organized by former FHP Lieutenant B.J. Tinney, who was district supervisor for Jefferson, Madison and Taylor counties at the time of Fulford's death and also his friend.
“We worked together for 12 years,” Tinney told this newspaper last year. “Jimmy was like a son to me. He was a fine, young man.”
He called Fulford’s death the worst day of his life in his then 37 years of service with the FHP.
“He was an all-around good person and a fine young man,” Tinney said. “It about killed me when it happened.”
Fulford died on a Saturday, the unintended victim of a pipe bomb that was meant to silence two women in Marianna whom the state planned to call as witnesses in a Broward County murder trial.
It was Fulford’s misfortune to stop a Mitsubishi Galant that he clocked doing 85 mph on the interstate on the fateful day.
The vehicle, it turned out, was a rental out of South Florida, and neither the driver nor the passenger had a valid driver’s license.
Fulford impounded the vehicle and arrested the driver, whom he had transported to the jail (the passenger chose to accompany his friend). While he waited for the tow truck to come and pick up the rental vehicle, Fulford decided to inventory the vehicle’s content.
Which contents included a gift-wrapped and bomb-rigged microwave in the trunk for the two Marianna women.  When Fulford pulled out the gift-wrapped box and opened the microwave’s door, the explosion killed him instantly.
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 much of his family then still resided. 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, is serving a life sentence. And Lester Watson, the driver of the rented Mitsubishi, got 40 years in prison.