Show f co i 7j WAS IT MURDER 1 The startling Story of a Ianib Canyon Logger At about 2 oclock today two rough looking men came bustling into the Police Office shoving in front of them a 16year old boy who seemed to be reluctantly keeping company with them and who as later developments show will likely have to answer to a very serious charge inside the As soon as the party were door one of the men who is known as I Old Pete and who has often figured in police circles started out in a blustering manner to tell how the boy had CRUSHED TIlE SKULL Of a man named Hyrum Mikesell in Lambs canyon and leaving him for I dead fled from the place The boy protested pro-tested his innocence but the third party chimed in with the accuser and persisted tliat Mikesell was fatally injured and would die before morning The scene of the occurrence was at John Durnings mill in Lambs canyon which leads off from Parleys canyon near the Halfway House The story of the affair as told by the old man is as follows There is a party of loggers camped at the place above named and among them were the boy and Mikesell who were continually at swords points Yesterday morning the two had a quarrel and MIKESELL STRUCK MORGAN In the eye Later in the day while the party were at work logging the two enemies ene-mies got off together and were absent from the crowd for some time so that none one witnessed what took place between them Later on however the boy came rushing up to Pete and one or two others and told them to go and take care of Mikesell that he had struck him with a neckyoke and LEFT HIM FOR DEAD Pete claims that the boy then ran away from the crowd and was not seen again until today when they were on their road to town bringing the wounded man in the stage As soon as the boy left the men went to the spot where he had told them he left Mikesell and there they found the latter lying with his face in the mud while the BLOOD IOURED From a gash in the back of his neck They picked the man up and this morning morn-ing they started for town with him on the stage On the way in they caught Morgan Mor-gan and brought him along Mikesell was taken to his home in the Eleventh ward and the narrator says he was more dead than alive He says there is a gash in the back of the mans i head clear through the skull so large that he could put his finger in it and that on the side of his head there is another an-other ugly wound THE BOYS STORY Does not differ materially as to the facts of the case but his estimate of the result is much more mild He states that Mikesell struck him in the eye without provocation and his optic shows that he was hit pretty hard He says also that every man in the camp advised him to kill Mikesell who was he says always picking upon him notwithstanding not-withstanding the immense difference in their size and age He claims that he did not leave the canyon of his own accord but that the men sent him away and that Pete told him that if he had stayed they would have STRUNG HIM UI He also says that Mikesells wounds are not serious but that they are merely scalp wounds He denies having told the men that he had left Mikesell for dead and says that after striking the man he took him water and brought him to He said that he was crazy mad when he did it and he didnt know what made him do it I Morgans first name William He is 16 years old and resides in the Twenty first ward of this city with his widowed mother Mikesell is a man of probably 30 and resides on Seventh East street in the Eleventh ward The boy told quite a plausible story and seemed less excited than his accuser The lateness of the hour does not permit an investigation of the affair in time for todays issue It likely however that the man overrates the wound while the boy underrates it from which taking a fair average one would conclude that Mikesell is very seriously though not fatally wounded Only the result of the wounds and the corroboration of one story or the other will decide whether or not it was a case of murder |