Memorial rededication for fallen FHP Trooper will be held Jan. 11, 12:00 noon, at US 19 and N. Basswood Ave. in Crystal River
Photos of Trooper Smith and his Memorial Sign courtesy of FHP.
The service will be conducted by the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) and National Association of Retired Law Enforcement Officers (NARLEO) for Trooper Ronald Gordon Smith, who was shot and killed in the line of duty on Sunday, December 23, 1973, while checking on two men in a parked car off U.S. Highway 19, in the area where the service will be held. During the ceremony, Florida Highway Patrol troopers will make a final roll call on audio speaker. The bridge over the bypass canal that separates Citrus and Levy Counties was dedicated to Trooper Smith in October 2010.
Trooper Smith had served with the Florida Highway Patrol for 7 months, at the time of his death. He was stationed in Homosassa, Florida. His career with the Florida Highway Patrol began May 1, 1973. He attended the 43rd recruit class in Tallahassee from June 25 to September 14, 1973. He had previously served with the Tallahassee Police Department, where his father had served and retired from.
Trooper Smith was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. He was 28 years-old at the time of his death and survived by his wife, Susan, and two-year-old daughter, Alicia.
On December 23, 1973, Trooper Smith was patrolling U.S. Highway 19 during his shift when he noticed a suspicious 1965 Chevrolet - which turned our to be a stolen car - parked on a dirt road, east of U.S. Highway 19, about two miles south of the Cross Florida Barge Canal.
The two men in the vehicle - Carl Rae Songer, a 23 year-old escapee from an Oklahoma prison work release program, serving three years for auto theft, and the other, Ronald Jones, a parolee, also from Oklahoma - were running low on gas and had decided to pull onto the side of the road and get some rest.
Trooper Smith tapped on the driver’s side window of the parked vehicle and first spoke with Ronald Jones, then opened the back door of the vehicle, where Carl Rae Songer was lying in the back seat, and began shaking Songer to awaken him. Songer sat up and fired at Trooper Smith with a 0.22-caliber gun, striking him four times in the chest and once in the leg, fatally wounding him. Trooper Smith returned fire before falling to the ground.
Jones took off in the stolen car, and Songer fled of foot. Two nearby hunters, Richard Clark Starling and Ralph Morris, looking for their dogs, heard the commotion and fired on the getaway car, striking Jones. Songer was shot in the foot by one of the hunters. The two hunters took the fugitives into custody.
Songer, the man who shot Trooper Smith, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. In 1989 his sentence was commuted to life. At least three death warrants were obtained and overturned during the interim. During 2023, Songer died in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in Mc Alester, Oklahoma where he was incarcerated
Ronald Jones was convicted as an accessory to murder and sentenced to five years. He was paroled after serving two years.