Attack Jail; Two Men Shot

Case(s)
Source Type: Newspaper
Author: n.a.
Publisher: Our Southern Home
Place of publication: Livingston, AL
Date of publication: 10/10/1906
Transcript:

ATTACK JAIL; TWO MEN SHOT Effort to Secure Wculd-Be-Rapist Leads to Bloodshed in Mobile PRISONER NOT PRESENT Sheriffs Word was Doubted by Mob and Shooting Took Place While Jail was Being. Searched. Tuesday night,’ at Mobile, Ala., Roy Hoyle, special officer of the Mobile and Ohio railroad, and one of the most widely known and best liked r.en in the vicinity, was fatally shot, and Alderman SJduey Lyons, chairman of the city council, was slightly wounded In the hand during a fight at the county jail between deputy, sheriffs and a crowd of men, determined to capture Dick Robinson, a young negro. The negro, who is only 17 years of age, and was said to bo wearing his first pair of long trousers, attacked Ruth, the 12-year-old daughter of Blount Sossaman, who lives about three miles from Mobile. Detectives were placed on the track of the negro, and within three hour3 he was captured. He was not taken to the jail at all and was at least eight miles from the city when the mob determined lo have him approached the building. As early as C o’clock in the. evening crowds of men commenced to gather in the downtown streets and by 6: SO five hundred men had formed. Sheriff Powers met the leaders of the mob and informed them that the man they were seeking was not in. the jail and had never been brought there. He offered to let anybody whom he personally knew pass through the jail to satisfy the crowd of the truth, of his statement. About forty men walked through the corridors and some of them returned and assured the members of the mob teat the roan was not there. While several men, including Hoyle ” and Lyons, were still in the jail a portion of the crowd led by a tall, raw-boned man, whose name is not known, seized a telephone pole, which had been blown down in the recent storm, and dashed it against the closed part of a double door, one-half : of which; was open. The door fell with a crash, and almost instantly a shot came from a revolver, in the hands of a man standing in the gate. ‘.At once the members of the mob commenced a fusilade and about a dozen revolver shots were fired. Not more than a dozen men took part in the firing, and as the shots ran out there was a ttampede on the part of the crowd for shelter. The mob was widely scattered, and in a few seconds Alderman Lyons, who had been on the inside of the jail, came out, and holding up his hand, from which the blood was streaming, announced that he had been shot, and that Roy Hoyle had received a bullet ‘n the left lung. There were loud calls for a physician, and cne who was in the crowd hastened to the jail, who, coming out in a few minutes, informed ; the crowd that Hoyle could live but a very short time. Hoyle has been exceptionally popular, and the fact that he had been shot while looking through the jail in order to ascertain if the negro was there took all the ; fight out of the irob and for the most part it dispersed quietly.

Citation:

“Attack Jail; Two Men Shot.” Our Southern Home (Livingston, AL), October 10, 1906.