A Deadly Chase Along the Seattle Waterfront
A desperate flight from police ends in tragedy beneath the wheels of a switch engine in the Seattle rail yards.
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.
B. Bell, while attempting to escape from the police, was run over and ground to pieces by a switch engine in the railroad yards at the foot of Monroe street about 8 o'clock at night. The body, after it had been viewed by Coroner Hoye, was removed to the Bonney-Watson morgue, where papers found on his person indicate that the man was from Ouray, Colorado. Henry Nolan, a cripple, who is believed to have been a partner of Bell's in an attempt to pass a $20 bill, said to be bogus, in the Snug Harbor saloon, is under arrest. Half an hour before the accident, Bell had attempted to pass the bill at the saloon, but the proprietor identified it as worthless and summoned police. As Bell fled the saloon, he led officers on a foot chase toward the waterfront, eventually hiding between freight cars near Marion street. In his final attempt to cross the tracks and evade Patrolman Kelly, Bell fell beneath a moving train, where he was killed instantly.
“Foreman Farrell jumped from the train and looked under the cars. By the glare of the electric light, fifty feet away, he saw the mangled form of a man.”
This incident captures the gritty, industrial danger of early 20th-century Seattle's rail-heavy waterfront. The location described, near the old waterfront railyards, is now part of the transformed central business district, a stark contrast to the lawless, hazardous atmosphere where a man could lose his life fleeing a minor charge.
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