Marshal Alonzo Hertig was shot and killed while responding to a call of a disturbance.

On November 5, 1923, Blue Springs Marshal Alonzo Hertig responded to the Blue Springs Telephone Office at 3:00 am in response from a telephone operator requesting assistance after an apparently intoxicated man created a disturbance in the office banging on the locked door to her inner office. The operator heard Marshal Hertig demand that the suspect put up his hands. The sounds of a struggle ensued and then the sound of a gunshot, then a seond gunshot some minutes later. Marshal Hertig sustained a gunshot wound to the stomach. Marshal Hertig, although mortally wounded was able to return fire on the twenty-six year-old suspect, William S. Young. Marshal Hertig called out that he was dying and asked the operator, who was still barricaded behind a locked door, to call for a doctor. Marshal Hertig and the suspect died at the scene.

Suspect Young was reported to be unknown in the village of Blue Springs, then a town of 550, but worked as a truck driver at a construction camp east of Blue Springs. Earlier that night he was found lying intoxicated in the roadway on Blue Springs Road about four miles east of Independence at after midnight by three men in a car. Two of the men were from Odessa and were giving the third by the name of Brooks, who was enroute to the construction camp as well to apply for work there, a ride as far as Blue Springs. They got the strongly built suspect Young, who was in a drunken stupor, into the car and drove to Independence where they contacted the police. Suspect Young revived and the men then drove him east to Blue Springs where the suspect became unmanageable and they removed him from the car. The two Odessa men dropped the third man, Brooks, off as planned in Blue Springs and continued on to Odessa. Brooks said that the suspect wandered away and Brooks went to the station where he encountered Marshal Hertig who was on his way to the telephone office. Brooks reported that he remained at the station and that he heard a shot shortly after Marshal Hertig entered the phone office, some 20 minutes passed and heard another shot. When interviewed by County Marshal Miles, Brooks reported that suspect Young had seemed educated, was well-spoken and said he was a sophomore at the University of Michigan. The suspect was found to be in his possession of letters from relatives in Durant, Mississippi and Austin, Texas. One of the letters cited the suspect's literary talent and encouraged him to write of his experiences and she would show him his talent as a writer.

Marshal Hertig was born in Pennsylvania in 1860. He was educated in the law and served in the profession in Chicago before moving to Blue Springs where he farmed for 23 years. Following his retirement from farming he was appointed as Marshal in Blue Springs on September 1, 1923, serving for two months prior to his death. He was survived by a niece of the home and a brother. Services were held in the Blue Springs Methodist Church.