Jim McKinney, known in Porterville as a “Jekyll and Hyde,” was a soft-spoken man liked by many, but when drunk he was dangerous, always armed, and looking for trouble. On the night of July 27, 1902, during a drunken rampage, he shot up Scotty’s chop house on Main Street, then rode through town on a stolen horse and buckboard, shooting at everyone he saw. Five men were wounded and one was killed. The man killed, Billy Lynn, was one of McKinney’s close friends. Three of the wounded were the town’s lawmen, Marshall John Willis, Deputy Johnny Howell, and Deputy Billy Thompkins, who tried to calm him but ended up in a shootout. McKinney escaped to Arizona, where he killed twice more, then returned to Bakersfield, where he was cornered and killed in a shootout in a Chinese Joss house in April 1903. Kern County Sheriff T. J. Packard and Deputy W. E. Tibbet were also killed in that battle.