The Constable and the Club
A Snoqualmie lawman claims self-defense in a Christmas Eve shooting.
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.
Peter Kennedy, the constable at Snoqualmie, who shot J. D. Mott on Christmas eve, denies that the shooting was unprovoked. Mott had been fighting with John Burnside, a man of 50 to 60 years, and getting the worst of it, ran away. I was afterwards standing in front of the saloon when Mott came up with a club on his shoulder. As he turned into the saloon I asked him what he was going to do with it, and he said: 'That's none of your business.' I took hold of the end of the club, and as he raised it to hit either me or John Burnside, I jerked it away from him. Half an hour later I was coming home with my brother and met Mott in front of Miller's grocery. He said: 'Is that you, Kennedy?' and then said: 'You black [expletive] I can lick you for half the ground you stand on,' and started for me with his right hand raised. I do not know whether he was armed, but a few minutes before a young man from the saloon had brought him his coat and vest, but he said, 'To hell with the coat and vest; it's the gun I'm looking for.' He was about four feet from me when I fired at him.
“I have known Mott for two years and have not known him to do more than $50 worth of work at his trade of painting. He lives by gambling in saloons.”
Conflicts involving off-duty law enforcement in public spaces are a recurring theme in Seattle's history, often centering on the tension between personal altercations and official power. The reliance on neighborhood witnesses to 'clear' a constable of wrongdoing highlights the informal, sometimes precarious nature of legal accountability in rural Washington settlements of the 1890s.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.