KVIG Informative

Patrolman William Fortye died on a Las Vegas street in 1966, shot with his own revolver by a driver he’d stopped for a traffic violation, while his police dog fought to save him. Six decades later, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s K-9 unit still pairs one officer with one dog for a career, and it still trains its handlers inside a facility that carries his name.

William Fortye joined the old Las Vegas Police Department on Oct. 10, 1961, according to a memorial record kept by the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, the department’s own officers’ union. He spent two years in the department’s Uniform Division before transferring into its K-9 Corps, according to a biography published by In Pursuit of Fallen Officers, a police memorial foundation. There, he was partnered with a police dog named Burgie.

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At 2:20 a.m. on Oct. 28, 1966, Fortye radioed that he was stopping a car heading north on Highland Drive, according to the Police Protective Association’s memorial record. About ten minutes later, he was dead. The driver he’d stopped wrestled Fortye’s own revolver from its holster during the stop and shot him three times. Burgie attacked the man, tearing his clothing and mauling his hand, but the suspect broke free and ran. Backup officers arriving at the scene found Burgie sitting beside Fortye’s body. Police caught the suspect a short time later, the memorial record states.

Fortye was 32 years old and had served five years and 18 days on the department, according to the Police Protective Association’s record. He left behind a wife and a 6-year-old daughter. According to In Pursuit of Fallen Officers, Fortye had asked for a transfer out of K-9 work and into the department’s Juvenile Division shortly before he died, hoping to work directly with young people.

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Metro’s K-9 section today fields 17 working police dogs handled by 15 officers and three sergeants, according to the department’s own description of the unit on its website. Handlers are still paired with one dog for the length of a career, the same arrangement that put Burgie beside Fortye in 1966. The unit trains today at the William R. H. Fortye K-9 Operations Center, named in his honor — a facility the Las Vegas Raiders toured in 2023 to visit K-9 Officer Jeff Corbett and his dog, Raider, according to the team’s own published account of that visit.

Metro’s own fallen-K-9 memorial page tracks dogs killed in the line of duty, not the officers who handled them, so the department’s public record does not say how Fortye’s death ranks among the risks its K-9 handlers have faced since 1966. What the record does show is simpler and still true: six decades after a driver on Highland Drive took his gun and turned it on him, the officers training today inside the center that bears his name carry the same risk he did, and answer it the same way — by trusting the dog riding next to them.