A Shootout on Front Street
An attempted arrest of two suspected thieves ends in a violent exchange of gunfire near the waterfront.
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.
Harry Kannard, an electrician, was seriously and probably fatally wounded by Officer Faucett in an attempt to escape while under arrest at the corner of Front and Battery streets at 11:30 o'clock last night. Complaint had been made to Officer Faucett by Mr. Trick, who lives on West street, that somebody had been trying to steal his plums. Faucett intercepted two men coming up Wall street; their hands were soft, and he discovered a chisel in the man's coat. He marched them to the patrol box at the corner of Battery. When Faucett moved to handcuff them, Kannard pulled a revolver and fired. Faucett returned fire, wounding Kannard, who fled before being found groaning on the sidewalk near Lenora Street. He was taken to Providence Hospital, where doctors consider the wound fatal.
“They were going out Fifth street and Faucett walked along and finally dropped behind. He then saw something sticking out at the back of the man's coat, and made him take it out. It proved to be a chisel.”
This violent encounter captures the tense, frontier-style policing that defined 1890s Seattle, long before the professionalization of the department. Front and Battery streets, once the site of such desperate struggles, are now located in the heart of the Belltown neighborhood, far from the plums and patrol boxes of the past.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.