Pages past - July 31

On this date ...

1969: A Clovis grocery store clerk was stabbed multiple times with a 6-inch hunting knife by a lone bandit, who escaped with about $60 from the register.

Ozella Pierce, 56, was stabbed in the chest and arms and beaten with a blunt instrument, police said. The robbery occurred about 8:30 a.m. at the Park Grocery, 1401 E. 10th.

Pierce called the store’s owner, telling him “I’ve been robbed and stabbed.” Owner Troy Hall called police and rushed to the store, where he found Pierce on her knees beside the phone.

Pierce told police the name of the man who stabbed her. Police arrested a man they later learned had a similar name but was not the man Pierce had identified.

“The small store was a mass of blood spots, with smears on the door, apparently left there as the robber fled, and trails showed where Mrs. Pierce had first been stabbed and her path as she got to the telephone,” the Clovis News-Journal reported.

The man Pierce identified and another man were arrested the next day in Oklahoma City.

Pierce was listed in “poor, but not critical condition,” in the Clovis hospital, officials said. She remained in the hospital a week later, continuing to “hold her own,” a hospital spokesman said.

Lester Ray Dickson Jr., 27, was ultimately found guilty of armed robbery and sentenced to 10 to 50 years in prison.

Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens. Contact him at:

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