A Child's Final Act of Mercy
A nine-year-old boy, dying from a pen-knife stab wound inflicted by a playmate, spends his final moments begging police to let his assailant go free.
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.
Lying on a cot in a hospital, dying from a stab wound in his abdomen, little Eddy Smith, 9 years old, begged a policeman not to imprison Eddie Hogan, 12, whom he had just identified as the boy who inflicted the wound which will cause his death. 'Don't lock him up. Let him go,' pleaded the injured boy. The father of the dying child sat by the cot, tears streaming down his face as he heard his son plead with the officer to release young Hogan. He was speechless with grief. The victim, with a number of other little fellows, was playing at Union Avenue and 46th Street, when young Hogan and two other boys met him. After a few words among the youngsters, a quarrel started and Eddy Smith and Eddy Hogan were soon fighting. Neighbors saw the Smith boy fall to the pavement, screaming, while all the rest ran away. Suffering with a pen-knife stab, which had penetrated the wall of the stomach, the child was hurried to the hospital, where physicians say he cannot live.
“Don't lock him up. Let him go.”
This heartbreaking story captures the raw, immediate tragedy of youth violence. While modern debates often focus on policy and prevention, the victim's own plea for mercy remains a haunting, timeless human element in the history of crime reporting.
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