Officer Delmer Eugene Cook
(June 12, 1917 -- Dec. 6, 1948)

On Sunday, Dec. 5, 1948, Dr. Percy A. Foster, 57, received a panicked phone call at his home at 4730 Angeles Vista Blvd. in Leimert Park, southwest of downtown Los Angeles. The call came from one of his patients, Sue Mae Bush, 61, who lived with her husband at 4800 W. 48th St., about two blocks east of the doctor's home and a block west of Crenshaw Boulevard.

Mrs. Bush told Foster that her husband, a 46-year-old World War II Army veteran and a current student in the pharmacy program at the University of Southern California, had forced her to swallow a potentially lethal dose of vitamin pills.

Foster quickly rushed to Bush's home and was immediately met by Bush's husband, who pointed an Army-issued .45-caliber Colt revolver at Foster. Bush's husband ordered the doctor to leave the premises, which he did.

Foster returned home and called police, and four LAPD officers quickly responded to the scene -- Officers Delmer E. Cook, Edgar P. Brown, Wayne E. Fitzgerald and Armando T. Gentile. When they arrived at the scene, they saw Bush's husband coming down the back stairs of the house, carrying two small suitcases and the Colt revolver.

As soon as Bush's husband saw the officers, he ducked behind his automobile and opened fire, aiming first at Cook and firing three shots, which all hit the officer. Cook was hit twice in the chest and once in the right leg.

Bush's husband, hiding behind his automobile, then fired at the other three officers, who returned fire. An estimated 35 shots were fired before Gentile was able to move closer to the shooter, take cover behind a bush and hit the gunman with two shots, to the right chest and the left wrist.

The gunman fell, and Gentile was able to kick his Colt revolver away. None of the other three officers were injured, but several houses in the area were hit by gunshots. The gunman was taken into custody, and he survived his injuries.

Cook, who lived with his wife, Thelma, and their 9-year-old daughter, Judith Ann, at 1322 S. Catalina St., was taken to the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, 1337 S. Georgia St., where he received six blood transfusions -- with the blood provided by doctors at the receiving hospital and Cook's fellow officers.

Cook died the following day, at 1:50 p.m., from internal hemorrhaging due to his chest wounds. His wife, their daughter, and his younger sister, Ilah, were at his bedside. He was 31 years old.

Bush was also taken to the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital, where her stomach was pumped. She recovered and was sent home. After the incident, her friends reported that she was "hysterical, but otherwise all right."

Cook was born June 12, 1917, in Toledo, Ohio, the second child of Harry Francis, a farmer, and Dora May Cook. Cook's parents were both born in Missouri and were married there, but they were living in Illinois when their first child, Nellie Mae Cook, was born in 1914. The family then moved briefly to Ohio, where Harry Cook worked as an auto mechanic.

Shortly after Delmer Cook's birth, the family moved back to Missouri, settling in Morehouse, a tiny town in the southeast corner of the state where Harry returned to farming and their next four children were born -- Joseph in 1918, Norma in 1922, Ilah in 1929 and Harriet in 1932.

On Oct. 28, 1938, Delmer Cook, 21, married Kansas native Thelma Irene Rustin, 18. At the time of their marriage, Cook was working at the Himmelberger-Harrison Lumber Co. sawmill in Morehouse, and the newlyweds lived with Cook's parents.

Cook enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and served for four years. After the war, Cook, his wife and their daughter moved to Los Angeles, where Cook joined the LAPD on July 22, 1946.

After her husband's death, Thelma remained with their daughter in the house on South Catalina Street, and she worked as a car hop at a drive-in restaurant.

Thelma Cook eventually moved to San Diego, where she died in 1994, at the age of 74.

Cook's killer also enlisted in the U.S. Army, on March 5, 1941, attained the rank of captain, and served in New Guinea with the Army Medical Corps. He received a medical discharge on Aug. 13, 1944.

Prior to his military service, Cook's killer, who was born in Texas, was the manager of the Good Service Pharmacy in El Paso. His wife was an elementary school teacher. After he received his medical discharge from the Army, Cook's killer and his wife moved to Los Angeles, and he enrolled in the pharmacy program at the University of Southern California.

Three days before the shooting, Dr. James C. Coleman, a USC psychology professor, informed the University Health Service that he suspected Cook's eventual killer to be suffering from "suppressed hostilities" and "manic feelings bordering on destructive activities" following a 15-minute classroom tirade. Coleman reported that the student was in need of immediate medical assistance.

"Whenever I have the inclination to murder or destroy myself," the student told his classmates, according to Coleman, "I take a dose of niacin amide (a form of Vitamin B3)." In one of the bags he was carrying when he shot Cook was a large bottle of niacin amide tablets.

Mrs. Bush told police that her husband's mental state had been growing increasingly worse in the weeks before the shooting, and she had been trying to get him committed to a mental hospital.

The incident on Dec. 6 started when Mrs. Bush and her husband got into an argument over vitamins. He was reportedly obsessed with vitamins, and was convinced that they would "save the world," and he forced his wife to swallow a potentially lethal dose of vitamin tablets.

After the shooting, Cook's killer was taken to the psychopathic ward of Los Angeles General Hospital.

Following a bench trial in February 1949, Cook's killer was found guilty of second-degree murder. But three psychiatrists testified during the trial that he was insane at the time of the shooting, and the judge dismissed the murder charge. The judge also determined that he was still insane and committed him to the Mendocino State Hospital -- formerly the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane -- in Talmage, California, about 140 miles north of San Francisco.

Cook's killer was released from Mendocino State Hospital two years later, on April 4, 1951. He returned to Texas where he remarried in 1973, and died in 1986, at the age of 83, in San Antonio. Mrs. Bush also returned to Texas, where she died in 1957, at the age of 70, in El Paso.

Officer Cook is buried at Inglewood Park Cemetery.

The second-ever episode of Jack Webb's "Dragnet" radio program, "The Nickel-Plated Gun," aired on June 10, 1949, six months after Cook's death. The episode ends with the statement, "Tonight's program is dedicated to radio Officer Delmer E. Cook of the Los Angeles Police Department who, on the afternoon of Dec. 6, 1948, gave his life so that yours might be more secure." The "Dragnet" radio series ran from 1949 to 1957. The TV version of "Dragnet" first aired on television in 1967, and continued until 1970.

The location of Officer Cook's memorial sign is unknown.

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