Deputy Phillips was shot and killed when attempting to arrest a man on a warrant.

In the early morning of September 12, 1960, Sheriff Ramsey and Deputy Phillips drove to the home of the suspect's brother on a farm about two miles northeast of Marston to arrest the suspect in regard to a string of burglaries. The sheriff went to the front door and Deputy Phillips went to the rear of the residence. Deputy Phillips called out that he saw the suspect inside the residence. Sheriff Ramsey called for the suspect to come out. The suspect asked for them to wait until he got a shirt on. The sheriff waited and no one came out. Sheriff Ramsey opened the front door, walked into the front room of the house, and heard a sound from the rear of the house of a shotgun being pumped. Deputy Phillips approached the back door and the suspect shot through the screen door striking Deputy Phillips in the head with a shotgun blast at close range, killing him instantly. Sheriff Ramsey ran out of the house, ordered suspect to come out and throw his gun down, firing twice into the air to scare him out. The suspect left by the rear door, came around the house, encountered Sheriff Ramsey at the corner of the front of the house, and shot the sheriff. The main load struck Sheriff Ramsey in the left shoulder and chin, knocking out a tooth and blinding him in one eye. The suspect, with a shotgun in his hand, followed the sheriff. Sheriff Ramsey fired two more shots, emptying his pistol, ran toward a road, and collapsed. At the suspect's instruction the sheriff threw his gun out on the road. The suspect then got a truck, loaded the sheriff into the truck and the dead Deputy Phillips in the back of the truck. The suspect drove to the Mississippi River levee then south for two miles, took his money and left him there. Three days later suspect was taken into custody by the highway patrol.

The suspect, Dan Wesley Gray, was convicted of Deputy Phillips murder and sent to prison for 60 years. He later escaped on May 2, 1963, was recaptured by FBI agents on December 17, 1963 and returned to Jefferson City, Missouri.

Deputy Phillips had been a deputy for four years after previously serving with the Portageville Police Department. He was survived by his wife, Dorothy, and a daughter. Interred: Portageville Cemetery.