Officer Earl Scott was shot and killed while making a traffic stop on Highway 99 in Stanislaus County at approximately 0440 hours.

He had just transmitted the vehicle's license plate number before being shot. The suspect, Columbus Junior Allen II (30), fled the scene but later walked into the Stockton Police headquarters and turned himself in. He was arrested and charged with murder.

Officer Scott had served with the California Highway Patrol for 5 years. His father and stepmother, Bill and Terrie Scott; sister, Lena Scott Tate; and grandmother, Margaret Whitney survive him.

Officer Scott comes from a family of law enforcement officers. His father and two uncles retired from the CHP and his cousin currently serves as a Sergeant with the CHP's Stockton office.

Officer Scott is honored at the Stanislaus County Peace Officer Memorial in Lakewood Memorial Cemetery, The California State Peace Officer Memorial in Sacramento, CA, and the National Peace Officer Memorial in Washington, D.C., Panel 37-E, Line 25.
∼A California Highway Patrol officer. Officer Scott was shot and killed in the early morning hours of February 17, 2006. Earl was a guy that got along with everyone. He was single so he would have his friends and other officers over to his house all the time. The was a fun guy that was always the life of the party. He was 36 years old. Wonderful article in the Contra Costa Times about Earl:

In the living room, scattered pieces of new-looking furniture are positioned around a shiny 50-inch plasma TV. Even though the carpet is a year old, it looks like no one has set foot on it. And there's good reason for that.
Because the house is just a house, not much different than many tract homes in the Hughson subdivision where it stands. But the garage, well, that's an entirely different matter. You see, the garage was Earl's Place.
An old dusty TV sits in one corner. Hanging on a wall is a banged-up door of a California Highway Patrol car. There's a comfy couch with soft spots from countless hours of use. You could usually find Scott sitting there, making someone laugh, or taking the time to listen to a friend's story. Proving, in some way, what he believed most about this life: It's all about the people you spend it with.
There's one more thing worth noting about Earl's Place, and it's the most significant detail of all -- the garage door was always open. Because that was the best way to meet new people and entertain old friends. And to know Scott was to spend some time in his garage.
"You couldn't walk by the house without seeing Earl in his garage," said Ron Lemings, a Modesto police officer and one of Scott's close friends. "He spent 96 percent of his time in there. His neighbors became his family so fast because of this.
"If you were walking by, he'd smile and say hello, and invite you in. The next thing you know, you're having a beer with him. And then he's meeting your wife and your kids. It just grew and grew like that. The next thing you know, he's giving you his garage code so you can be there when he gets home."
Supporting others
"Everyone who lived on that block had his garage code. Believe it or not, I bet it happened within about three or four weeks from the time he moved there. Sometimes there would be people waiting for him in his garage, drinking his beer when he got home. And he loved that. It was just amazing."
But understand, no one stopped by Earl's Place just for the beer. Beer is cheap, and can be found almost anywhere. No, people came over because Scott was that rare kind of good-natured person who simply made people want to be around him.
He was confident without giving off the impression he had something to prove. He was friendly and always ready to drop his own project to help someone else with theirs. To other law enforcement officers, he felt like a little brother, even to those who were younger than he was. That's because Scott did all the things a younger brother does, like sharing whatever he had, looking for ways to help and thinking about others before himself.
"I don't know anybody who didn't like that guy," said John Popke, a correctional officer at the Sierra Conservation Center, a Jamestown prison where Scott worked for about six years until 2001. "He was fun, energetic, intelligent, just a real down-to-earth guy. As a correctional officer, he reminded me of Audie Murphy (the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War II). Earl was such a warrior. He had the heart of 10 men. I love the guy."
Popke and Scott shared a lot of time together. Popke trained Scott after he came to the correctional facility, and sponsored Scott's application to join Sierra's S.W.A.T. team. It was then, during a failure, that Popke caught another good glimpse of Scott's character. During Scott's first attempt to make the S.W.A.T. team, he failed to complete the two-mile run in less than 17 minutes, missing by a few seconds that disqualified him from the team.
"When he finished that run, he turned around and cheered everyone else on who was still running," Popke said. "He was patting people on the back even though he knew he couldn't make it on the team. That's just how he was, always supporting his friends.
"If someone's car broke down, he'd help fix a tire. If someone needed money, he gave them money. If there was a retirement party, he was there. He was always there for his friends and that was one of the best things about him. He just really enjoyed being around other officers and it showed."
Following father's path
After his initial setback, Scott trained harder and, six months later, passed all the S.W.A.T. team qualifying tests. But, by then, he had decided to follow his father's footsteps into the California Highway Patrol, one of Scott's longtime dreams. Popke said that decision came as quite a disappointment to Sierra's senior staff.
"He was real proud of his dad," Popke said. "When he finally got accepted to the CHP, he told me his dad was going to be really excited about it. And he was really excited to become a highway patrolman."
Popke remembered a nice moment with Scott five years ago. Scott -- at 5-foot-10 and 150 pounds, hardly an imposing figure -- was sitting, smiling and smoking a cigarette, using his dry sense of humor to make Popke laugh about something. Popke looked at Scott and shook his head in admiration.
With a cool confidence and deft communication skills, Scott had commanded the respect of the 2,000 inmates who live at Sierra. It was an odd contrast to the man who, as Popke knew him, simply was a genuinely nice guy with a Barney Fife-like face.
"I can't believe you're going to be a highway patrol officer," Popke said.
Scott looked up at him, and smiled big and proud.
"I know," Scott said, "I can't believe it either."
Popke thought about countless memories of Scott on Friday after he heard the news that Scott had been shot and killed during a Highway 99 traffic stop near Salida. Popke, and many other law enforcement officers who knew Scott well, had trouble believing what had happened to one of the friendliest guys they knew. He was a man known for a smile, or at least a smirk.
The shooting simply was something that made no sense.
"He was truly out there to help people," Lemings said. "If this guy who shot him knew one thing about Earl, he just wouldn't have done it."
Scott, 36, was born in Banning, CHP spokesman Tom Killian said, presumably because his father, William Scott of Salinas, was stationed in the Riverside area. William Scott was a longtime CHP sergeant who worked in the Monterey-area office. Two of Earl Scott's uncles retired as CHP sergeants from the Modesto-area office.
Working toward dream
Modesto police Officer Robert Hart said Scott's desire to continue the family tradition was clear when the 21-year-old Scott moved into a room in Hart's house in 1992. At the time, Scott worked as a waiter at Del Rio Country Club to pay the bills, but he knew that wasn't his future.
In the mid-'90s, Scott took a job as a correctional officer at the Sierra Conservation Center, where he established himself as an outstanding investigator. Once, during a routine release of an inmate, Scott discovered the inmate was trying to smuggle personal information about Sierra employees in his shoes and on the inside of a cup.
With so many inmates coming and going, checking every single personal item belonging to an inmate didn't always happen. But Scott's investigation revealed the inmate had been allowed into areas containing sensitive information such as addresses and Social Security numbers, and that diligence revealed systemwide flaws and touched off countless changes in security.
"He was one of those elite types of individuals who was going to shoot up through the ladder, and there were people in our organization trying to get him to stay," said Randall Harris, a correctional officer at Sierra. "I have no doubt that if he stayed here he would have worked his way up to warden. And I would have enjoyed working for him."
While Scott worked at Sierra, he also joined the Modesto Police Department as a reserve officer. He worked at MPD from June 1996 to August 2000. Like those at Sierra, Hart tried to convince Scott to make MPD his home. And though Scott was seen by many MPD officers as part of their family -- he still regularly went on cruises and camping outings with many of them -- the CHP was where he had wanted to be all along.
Leaving fond memories
He started his CHP career in Santa Cruz, and transferred to Modesto six months later.
"I remember him leaving for the (CHP) academy and coming home on weekends," said Hart, who was Scott's roommate for 13 years until he bought his house in Hughson last year. "I went to his graduation, and that was really exciting for me. I watched him go from a waiter to a highway patrolman. I remember telling him how proud I was of him."
Today would have marked Scott's five-year anniversary with the CHP. At a news conference Friday morning, CHP spokesman Tom Killian listened to that and other details about Scott's life. Yet there was one detail Killian had not expected to hear: that Scott had three relatives who retired from the CHP.
"That really surprised me," Killian said. "A lot of people use their past or their connections as a pedestal or a stepping stone, and they make those connections known. That wasn't Earl. He was out there building his own platform, making his own footprints."
Because Scott worked for the CHP, MPD and Sierra within the past six years, his death truly touched many areas of local law enforcement. At houses scattered through the area, CHP officers and others who had worked with Scott in recent years gathered and talked about the man, trying to make some sense of his death. But there was no sense to be found.
Instead, they told stories about him, trying as best they could to celebrate his life. They told stories of a young man who never lost sight of his dream. They talked about how the law enforcement wives felt denied on those rare occasions that Scott, who never married, did not attend a function. And they told stories like this one, stories that show how quickly a man can make a mark on a community.
On Super Bowl Sunday, a handful of officers and some of their families met at Scott's house -- actually, it was in the garage -- to watch the game. Gene Balentine, a Modesto police officer, drove there with his wife and their children.
Before the game, Balentine's wife took the kids on a walk to a nearby park. While pushing kids on a swing, she got into a conversation with a mom who lived in the area.
The woman asked Balentine's wife if she had just moved there, but she said she was just visiting a friend's house for the game. Asked where, Balentine's wife said it was just down the street. "Oh, you mean Earl's Place?" the woman asked.
"You know Earl's Place?" Balentine's wife asked, surprised because she knew the woman lived a few blocks away from Scott."Well, yeah," the woman said. "Everybody knows Earl's Place."