A Bullet Between Brothers
A shot fired from the darkness of a Yesler Avenue street at night narrowly missed two brothers standing in their upstairs home.
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.
A bullet was fired through a window of Styles R. Nettleton's residence at 1803 Yesler Avenue Saturday night about 9:30 o'clock, passing between the heads of Mr. Nettleton's two sons. Whether it was fired accidentally or intentionally is a matter of conjecture. U. S. Nettleton and Styles R. Nettleton, Jr., stood talking near the window in the front room on the second story. Suddenly there was a shot, and a bullet passed through the upper part of the window and between their heads, embedding itself in the wall opposite, three inches from the ceiling. Their efforts to find the party who fired the shot and whence it came were of no avail, as the persons in the house on the opposite side of the street professed ignorance of the matter. The case was reported to Capt. Sims last night, and Detective Philbrick went out and investigated. He reported that he was satisfied that the bullet was from a point opposite the house and not from the ground. Any angle taken from the ground with the broken glass for an object would have hit the ceiling. Mr. Nettleton is at a loss to explain why the shot was fired, if intentional, and as the matter now stands it looks as if it was accidental and the guilty party dare not confess.
“Suddenly there was a shot, and a bullet passed through the upper part of the window and between their heads, embedding itself in the wall opposite.”
This 1893 incident highlights the era's lack of forensic technology and the raw reality of early Seattle, where gunfire was not an uncommon neighborhood occurrence. Today, 1803 Yesler Avenue remains a dense, historic urban corridor, but the mystery of that 'accidental' shot lingers as a window into the precariousness of life in a rapidly developing frontier city.
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