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Show SALARYTOOSMALL A Council Bluffs Bank Clerk Embezzles $500.00. SHOOTS AND SUICIDES When Gaueht American Cattle Will be Taken to Mexico to Improve the Ere d In That Country A Crazy Drunk Bute -ers a an. Council Bluffs, la Dec. 16. At 11 o'clock today, e tragedy was enacted in the private office of the Citizens' State Bank of Council Bluffs, which may result fatally for three persons. John Huntington, assistant bookkeeper book-keeper and collection clerk, shot C. A. Cromwell, cf Minneapolis, and F. N, Hayden, of Chicago, representatives of the Fidelity snd Casuality coirpany of New York, And then emptied hia revolver re-volver into his own brain, inflicting a wound from .which he died two hours later. Cromwell and Hayden, it is thought, will recover. - . Huntington was one of the best known men iu Council Bluffs and numbered num-bered his friends by the hundreds. So far as can" be learned, he had no bad habits and this is what makes his act harder to explain . On the 20 of last .July a check for $500 was- turned over to him by Ira F. Hendricks, one of the employes of the bank, in the regular routine cf business. Huntington charged up the check to the Union Stock .National Bank of South Omaha, and fiom that day to this nothing whatever has been seen or heard of it. The following fol-lowing day, Huntington left for a vacation vaca-tion trip of several weeks to New York city. The bank officials . kept thinking the check would turn up soaneror later and deferred any action. As time pas-6ed on and it became evident that the bank was out $500, they sent a message mes-sage to the Fidelity and Casualitv company,- notifying it ol the fact and sug-uesting sug-uesting that inspectors come on and make an investigation. The bank officials claim that at the time tbey had no charges to ,make against Huntington or any employes of the bank in particular. All of their employes were bonded in the Fidelity and they preferred that the Fidelity company should make the investigation investiga-tion rather tbarnake it tl iiseJves. Messrs. Cromweli and HaydTarrived in the city last Friday and took rooms at the Grand hotel. They cross-examined each of the bank employes through whose hands the missing check had passed and among the rest Huntington. They claimed to have discovered that h j had been spending more money than the salary of $45 a month which he was receiymg would warrant, and on this fact, together with the fact that the check had been last seen in Mb hands, they based their eupicions. Hayden, one of the Wounded men, in conversation about the affair, said: "We had only been talking a few minutes, and no accusation had as yet been made. But the questions we had been asking were very pointed and were easily taken by him as leading to a direct charge of theft. At times he bad talked loudly and in a somewhat excited manner, but just before the Ehoot"tg he cooled down, and we had not the slightest intimation of what he was about to do. He suddenly got up, without any show of anger, and culling cull-ing out a revolver, commenced firiDg, first at Cromwell then at me. We had no weapons and were hot prepared to defend ourselves, nor is it likely that we ehould have thought of doing eo even had we been armed, as the shooting shoot-ing had been done so rapidly andtt was all over so soon." |