The Bullets That Whizzed Through Commercial Street
A quiet walk near the foundry turns into a terrifying brush with death as three men open fire on passersby.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
H. P. Walton, a bookkeeper for the Moran Bros. Company, narrowly escaped being shot last evening about 6 o'clock while returning home along Commercial Street. He was walking with C. Casey, employed by the Hart Lumber Company, H. Smith of the Kent Mill Company, and two other young men. The party had just left the Moran Bros. foundry and was heading north on Commercial Street when the report of a rifle rang out from about 500 feet to the south. A bullet whizzed by Mr. Walton’s head, missing his nose by no more than six inches, and lodged in a pine board fence nearby. The report startled the five men, who turned instinctively to see the source of the shot. Immediately, another was fired, lodging in a telegraph pole about sixty feet away. The shots originated from the front entrance of McGinn’s bottling works, located at the corner of Commercial and St. Charles streets, fired by men standing in the doorway. The group made haste to escape the line of fire, and no further shots were heard. Lieutenant Sullivan and Officer Nick Hanna later arrested James Sullivan, William Martin, and Joseph Nauer at the bottling works. Walton identified them as the men in the doorway, though he could not determine who pulled the trigger. Nauer posted bail, while the other two remained in jail, booked on charges of discharging firearms within city limits.
“A bullet whizzed by Mr. Walton’s head, missing his nose not over six inches, and lodged in a pine board fence about ten feet distant.”
While Seattle’s industrial landscape has transformed from foundries and bottling plants into dense urban cores, the sudden, senseless violence of a random shooter remains a haunting, all-too-familiar headline in the city's ongoing struggle with public safety.
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