The Midnight Shootout on Pike Street
A plumber’s discovery leads to an armed confrontation between a mysterious intruder and a Seattle police officer.
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.
Policeman Cummings had a shooting match with an unknown crook at 3 o'clock yesterday morning. Some men working on the plumbing in the building occupied by Chapin, at Second and Pike streets, saw a man on one of the upper floors who could give no satisfactory account of himself. The man got out and the plumbers notified the officer. He called out to the man, and, engaging him in conversation, was satisfied that his errand was not a legal one. While speaking to him, the man drew back a few paces and fired a pistol three times at him. Cummings drew his iron and shot six times at the man, though neither of them succeeded in hitting the other. No arrest has been made.
“Cummings drew his iron and shot six times at the man, though neither of them succeeded in hitting the other.”
Shootouts at 3:00 a.m. in the heart of downtown Seattle have a long, storied history. While the modern intersection of 2nd and Pike is better known for its proximity to Pike Place Market, the grit and street-level crime described in 1893 remains a vivid, recurring theme of the city's urban evolution.
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