Forty-two years ago Sunday marks one of the most fabled and courageous acts by a Mississippi law enforcement officer in memory, one that still resonates today.
Especially for Mike Posey, who wrote a letter and posted it to Facebook over the weekend. It was, in part, a way to reach out to the family of recently-fallen officer Troy Floyd, and it was also a way of dealing with thoughts and emotions that still boil to the surface more than four decades later when he thinks of the death of his father, Franklin County Sheriff James Posey.
It started with a call which even the most seasoned lawmen still recount with tears in their eyes, an act of supreme sacrifice that lives on in the kind of legacy that is the stuff of hero movies.
Local man Derald Coghlan had taken a woman and three children hostage and fled into Lincoln County. A standoff ensued, and Coghlan threatened to kill his hostages as a pack of law enforcement officers gathered, trying to coax him to let them go. Posey knew him, so when he got to scene, he talked Coghlan into letting him trade himself for the hostages. Then he turned to former McComb Police Chief Billie Hughes and handing him his pistol, he said, “Billie, back off, I can handle it.”
Hughes said years later in an interview with a reporter at the Brookhaven Daily Leader, “He bet his life on it, and he certainly did a very heroic thing.”
As history bears out, Posey lost his life that day trying to talk Coghlan off the ledge. It would change the lives of so many — the lawmen on the scene included retired Franklin County Sheriff James Newman, and retired Copiah County Sheriff Harold Jones — both MHP troopers at the time. Hughes said in the Daily Leader interview that he thought about regularly after it happened and that it affected the way he policed from that point forward. Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing was eight years old at the time, and the incident happened right down the road from his home. He said it’s not the only reason he went into law enforcement, but it was a big influence.
“And circumstances everyday make you think about things like that in this job,” Rushing said.
Charles “Sonny” Welch, one children taken hostage that day, would grow up to become a deputy.
In the days afterward, President Ronald Regan called Mike Posey and his sister Melissa, who was 17 at the time. He read to them John 15:13, which says, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he would lay his own life down for his friends.”
In the Daily Leader article from 2009, Melissa Posey said, “My brother and I would like to tell everyone even though this happened, a lot of good has come out of it … The main thing for us to do as people in this life is to forgive. To love one another. No matter what happened.”
On September 29, 2024, Mike wrote the following:
The day was just like all the rest of the days before. Pretty blue sky days, cool fall-like weather. Leaves beginning to let loose. You could start to feel the change of the season in the air. For a fourteen-year-old boy, it was a good time of the year.
My Daddy was the sheriff in Franklin County, Mississippi, the same county where I went to school, and where we lived. In September of 1982, life for me was pretty simple. I hunted and fished and played with my few friends that lived on our dead-end road.
Dad was always getting calls to go out and serve the people of the county. Day and night there was always something going on, from shootings, stabbings, wrecks, fights and all types of things. Blocked stop signs (curve in the road) to older people just suspicious of a car going down the road. It didn’t matter who it was or what it was, Daddy would go. He loved helping people and was a called servant to people.
On the day of Sept. 29, 1982, I was hanging out with him at the Sheriff’s office. We had been laughing and having a good evening when he got the call to have to go. My stepmom was called to come get me, and I remember him saying he had a crazy man on the loose. I was never scared for him because he was my Daddy. To a fourteen-year-old, in my eyes he was the toughest person I knew.
As early evening turned to late evening, I had made it home and was hanging out with my friend Eric. Again, the evening was good when all of a sudden my only sister pulled up in a very big hurry and told me to get into the car.
As we pulled away I could tell she was upset and crying, which was unusual. I asked her what was wrong, and that’s when I found out. “We are going to the hospital, Dad has been shot.”
I can’t explain the emotions that were being related on that 30 mile trip to check on him. Melissa and I wanted to believe that when we got there, he would be sitting up smiling, saying they haven’t got me yet!
We were pulling up at the hospital when we saw our stepmother running away from the hospital on foot. Crying and screaming, we stopped to see what was happening and all I heard was, “He is dead.”
As I write this 42 years after that night, I still can’t explain the emotions running through my head.
By the time we could make it into the emergency room, I could see my Grandmother crying uncontrollably, everyone torn to pieces inside because of what had happened.
Everyone was trying to show love to me and the family. I felt it, but I didn’t want that. I wanted my Daddy. I wanted to see him. Well, they would not let me, but I caught a glimpse of him on a table in the emergency room.
The rest of that night was almost like a blur to me.
It was the day after when the real hurt came. I woke up and laid there for a minute, I thought, “What a terrible dream, it felt so real.” And I heard strange voices in the house. I walked right back into the same nightmare I thought I had just woke up from.
I have felt a pull on my heart to share this story because I want all that hear it to understand that every day after remembering something like this is the day after for the families that have suffered a loss like this, it seems like the older I get the more I hear of it happening.
There was a song I love to hear, “One day at a time, sweet Jesus.” You know if you’re looking below, it’s worse now than then, and it is.
To the Floyd Family, the loss of Troy is not in vain. He was a great guy who loved the Lord Jesus and was a called law man. When a lawman or woman gets up every day to go do their job, and they put their life on the line to serve and protect us and they’re willing to give up everything for it, it definitely is not because it is a big money job (it is the calling)!
The ones of us that have or have had that person in our life understand this, but we just think something won’t happen.
Again, I felt the need to share this to whoever it can help. I feel blessed to have had the 14 years I had with my dad, and I’m very proud of the courage he had. I’m also thankful for the men and women that are called to serve and protect us.
Always remember the families behind these great people.
With Love,
Mike Posey
