Dwayne Looney (born 1939) was a Madison County deputy sheriff who, in 1984, was accidentally injured during Carl Lee Hailey's vigilante killings of white supremacist rapists Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard. Despite being wounded by Hailey, Looney supported his acquittal, saying that he would have also killed the rapists if it had been his daughter who was raped.
Biography[]
Dwayne Looney was born in rural Canton, Mississippi in 1939, and he became a deputy sheriff of the Madison County Sheriff's Department. In 1984, Looney was sent to escort the jailed white supremacist rapists Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard to their trial at the Madison County courthouse, and he was unintentionally injured when their victim Tonya Hailey's father, Carl Lee Hailey, fired on them with an M16. Looney was shot in the leg by a ricocheting bullet, and his leg was amputated; the two white supremacists were killed. Looney testified at Hailey's trial, during which he begged the jury to "turn him loose", saying that he would have done the same deed had his daughter been raped.