Retired detective killed in standoff with deputies

RUSK, TEXAS (AP) - A retired Lufkin police detective has died after East Texas deputies shot him in a brief standoff Tuesday at his mother's rural graveside.

Allen Lee Wallace, 50, was fatally wounded at the Sardis Cemetery, about 9 miles southwest of Rusk.

Two deputies went to the graveyard in answer to a report of a possible suicide, said Cherokee County Sheriff James Campbell. The deputies did not spot Wallace until he called out to them as he sat in a lawn chair at his mother's grave with a pistol at his feet, Campbell said.

The deputies talked with Wallace briefly before he picked up the gun and aimed it at them, and both deputies opened fire on him, Campbell said. Neither deputy was wounded, and both have been assigned to desk duty pending completion of a Texas Rangers investigation, he said.

Wallace was a 23-year veteran of the department and was a narcotics investigator when he retired in 2001, said Lt. David Young, a Lufkin Police Department spokesman.